All posts tagged fake non fiction

I’m back! Back on my blog, back in my house, back in this world without TOO much damage to my bodily parts.

Where have I been? Well, there are two answers to that question. First answer – I’ve been with Branwell. Second answer – I’ve been in hospital. I don’t believe the second answer though because I KNOW I was with Branwell, I have the scurvy to prove it, and I REMEMBER being with Branwell but I don’t remember being in hospital where Lottie insists I was (not until I woke up on Ward 23 and that was only just over a week ago). It’s more TRICKERY from Lottie – I thought she’d given up trying to drive me mad but nope, here she goes again – she keeps telling me the bouncy period I was in ended with me bouncing out of my bedroom window right into Intensive Care, but she’s lying – when I ACCIDENTALLY FELL out of the window Branwell caught me and took me on a little holiday to the Victorian seaside where we spent the days walking the beaches looking for pretty shells, and eating lovely cakes in the tea shops.

I’m sorry I couldn’t come online to tell you where I was – the Victorian seaside tea shops aren’t wired up for the internet, in fact NOWHERE in Dead World is wired up for the internet. I tried sending a letter to my blog so you’d know where I was but the Victorian post is STUPIDLY slow and if my calculations are right (and they won’t be, I’m shite at Maths) the letter will have reached no further than 1871 (probably May or June) – and it’ll arrive here in 2154 when we’re ALL living in Dead World so you’ll know what it says before it gets here.

I don’t know how they got me out of Dead World and up onto Ward 23. Branwell doesn’t know either, but he says I put up a good fight to stop them taking me. The first thing I remember of Ward 23 is sitting in front of a NEW HEADSHRINKER (not the one in the blackmail shagging photos Scotty took) in a big room that had only two chairs (those we were sitting on) and a little table. She was about 8 years old and had her hair in PIGTAILED PLAITS and her mouth was going YAP, YAP, YAP, YAP, YAP, and then the yapping turned into words and she was saying, ‘You’ll have to do a lot of mindful work to get past this, Dotty,’ and my first thought was, ‘WHY IS THIS FUCKING EMBRYO TELLING ME WHAT TO DO?‘

They’d been AT me, full frontal lobotomy or something, because my head was wrapped in a big bandage and my arm was in plaster and other bits of me hurt like a bastard. The new headshrinker said she hadn’t done anything to me, the bandages and the plaster cast and the PAIN was from when I bounced out of the window. LIAR. I know what they did. Experiments. Nasty experiments on my brain. And my arm. And the other painful bits. I was so shocked I jumped up out of the chair (slowly – more of a hoik than a jump) and she jumped up too and she said, ‘Violence isn’t the answer, Dotty,’ and I said, ‘Don’t worry, love, I never punch anyone who’s wearing MOTHERCARE,’ and she pressed a button that was dangling from a strap round her neck and two whitecoats came in and took me to a room with a bed in it. That was sometime last week and I didn’t get home until the day before yesterday.

I’ve got a lot of bloggy catching up to do, but after the experiments they did on me my brain isn’t functioning at its usual level of brilliance so I’ll do what I can and what I can’t do I won’t do. And thank you very much for the emails (sorry I couldn’t let you know where I was).

‘FUCK OFF! GO AWAY!’

But he wouldn’t go away, he kept knocking his weak little girly knock on my back door –

knock knock …….

knock knock …….

which hurt my ears the more he did it because even though I recognised it as a quiet little knock knock which wouldn’t be loud to others (hyperacusis brain retraining!! and tinnitus brain retraining! It’s amazing what they can do nowadays) to me it still sounded louder than the KNOCK OF THOR –

KNOCK KNOCK

KNOCK KNOCK

so when I reached the point where I couldn’t stand it any more I opened the door and shouted, ‘WHAT?’

‘Hello.’

‘FUCK OFF. WHAT DO YOU WANT?‘

‘I’ve brought some leaflets to show you.’

‘Eh?’

‘Can I come in? I’d like to show you what they’re all about. They’re very interesting,’ he said, and I was so stunned and confused and boggly-brained that when he stepped forward I automatically stepped back without thinking – and in he came.

‘Wipe your sandals,’ I mumbled.

He went straight over to the kitchen table. He pulled out a chair as he said, ‘May I?’ and even though I didn’t say yay or nay or how’s your father, he sat down.

Then he said, ‘Come and sit with me.’

‘NO.’ Like fuck I was going to sit next to him – though I don’t know why I bothered standing as close to the open back door as I did, if he’d started attacking me I couldn’t have RUN OUTSIDE, could I?

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘A green tea, please.’

Cheeky bastard.

‘What do you WANT?‘ I repeated.

‘Well now. I came to show you these,’ and he started flapping the leaflets at me.

‘Leave them there.’ I pointed at the table. ‘You can go now.’

‘No.’

That was it –

PANIC ATTACK, PANIC ATTACK, PANIC ATTACK, GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OFF ME, GET OFF ME and whatever else I screamed at him, because he came over and TOUCHED MY SHOULDERS and pulled me forward so I was bent in two and he kept saying ‘ Breathe, breathe, breathe, slow, slow,’ and as the PANIC ATTACK started to ease he said ‘You’re fine, you’re fine, it was only a panic attack,’ – and it might ONLY have been a panic attack to him but I think I changed his mind on the ‘only’ when I spewed up all over his nasty sandalled feet – ‘oo! oo! My feet! oo! oo!’ he said, and he shuffled himself out of the door and into the garden and the second he was through the door I slammed it shut and locked it and bolted it and clipped all the padlocks into place, then I ran to the window to see if he’d gone but he hadn’t, he was in my back garden standing on one nasty sandalled foot WITH THE OTHER NASTY SANDALLED FOOT RAISED AND ABOUT TO GO INTO MY FISH POND THAT ISN’T A POND IT’S HALF A WHISKEY BARREL.

‘MY FUCKING FISHES!!!!’ I screamed and I BANG-BANG-BANGED on the window but he ignored me so I ran upstairs to the spare bedroom and opened the window and he was STILL KILLING MY FISHES so I looked round for something to throw at him but I couldn’t see anything throwable, my collections in that room are PRECIOUS, but my sniper rifle was propped up against my elephant’s foot umbrella stand and I knew it was loaded because what’s the point of having a sniper rifle if it isn’t ready to use when you need it?

So I shot him. But I didn’t shoot him in the head, I shot him in the arse-cheek because the way he was balanced, one nasty sandalled foot on the ground, the other KILLING MY FISHES, his arse presented the best target. He fell over, backwards, into my creamy-flowered Potentilla. No scream, they only sound that came out of him was a weird little ‘ooooo.’ But who says ‘ooooo’ when they’ve been shot in the arse? I’ve never known anyone to say ‘ooooo’ when they’ve been shot in the arse, they usually scream blue murder – I had one bloke (a cold-caller – energy suppliers) who wouldn’t stop screaming, ‘MURDER-MURDER-MURDER-MURDER,’ till the ambulance came and took him away.

I rang the Big Chief Inspector and told him to add timothy to my tally and to tell his 999 operators to ignore any calls from or regarding him – I didn’t want the nuisance of the Armed Dibble Unit and the megaphones again (the brain retraining hasn’t covered police megaphones yet), and nosey neighbours who want to know why they’ve been evacuated off the street. The Big Chief Inspector asked if I was okay and I said, ‘I am now,’ and he said, ‘That’s all right then. Don’t worry yourself any further, Dotty dear, I’ll sort it all out at this end. Go and have a lie down.’

So I did have a lie down. And I had a little sleep. And when I woke up and looked out of the spare bedroom window, timothy was gone and I could see down into the whiskey barrel where my two fishes were swimming around like nothing happened, and when I looked at them through my binoculars they seemed as happy as fishes can be. Bless their little golden fins.

So this last week or so has been UP UP UP UP UP which is why I haven’t been around much and why I haven’t read many of your blogs and why I had FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY EIGHT unopened emails in my inbox this morning, and that’s not counting the post notifications I’ve already opened even though I didn’t visit the blogs to read the rest of the posts, but fuckitty-doo, I’ll get round to sorting them out at some point and I’ll get round to reading your blogs at some point too, probably a month late on the posts by the time I do read them.

Anyway, back to what I was saying – I haven’t had a bouncy week for AGES and this week’s been very bouncy, I’ve been online shopping, I’ve been outside shopping, I’ve been making wishlists for when I next go shopping, and I’ve had some parties and I made a new blog, and Branwell asked me to marry him, and THE BERSERKERS did nine little dances for me and the youngest BERSERKER broke her wrist when I got her to do the splits on top of my clothes-horse but I drew a picture of Winnie-the-Shite on her cast so she’s happy as diddly-dum and she can still dance.

Remember how Lottie divorced Fat-Fuck when she found out he was shagging some bewer from work? Well get this – Lottie’s got a new a boyfriend. He’s called timothy. Says it all, doesn’t it? I know people can’t help their names but if I was called timothy I’d shorten it and replace the ‘i’ with an ‘o’ or better still I’d give myself a nickname like MAN or BAD BASTARD or FUCKING NUTTER WHO’LL KNOCK TEN BELLS OUT OF YOU IF YOU EVER CALL ME A WUSS AGAIN.

Lottie calls him timmy and just writing it has nearly made me heave up the Cumberland sausage sandwiches I had for my dinner. When she brought him round I couldn’t help myself, I blurted out, ‘OH MY FUCKING GRANNY’S GUMS, what the fuck are you doing with a plonker like him?’

And she said, ‘Do you know what you are, Dotty? A nasty bitch.’

And I said, ‘Yep, that’s true. And you’ll do well to remember it because if you bring that streak of piss to my house again I’ll BATTER HIM. And I’ll batter YOU for having him as a boyfriend.’

I made him stand outside the back door while we had our APPLE PARTY (I got THE BERSERKERS to pick all my apples before they rot off) because he looks like Nicholas Lyndhurst as Uriah Heep except he was wearing sandals and combat shorts and a t-shirt that said ‘FREE EVERYONE’ and he scares the bejesus out of me.

*

Lottie’s new boyfriend, timothy the creepy fucker.

*

Guess what he does for a job? Go on, guess.

NO, you’re WRONG, he’s not an accountant, he’s a fucking SOCIAL WORKER. To be sociable I asked him ‘So how many kids have you snatched away from their families, then?’ and do you know what the fucker did? He SMILED at me, one of those smirky, patronising LIBERAL smiles that make you want to SAW THE FACE OFF the bastard but because THE BERSERKERS were there I didn’t saw his face off, I just gobbed in his cup of tea (TEA!! when there’s ABSINTHE to drink!!!) and squirted a bit of Mr Muscle Drain Cleaning Foam into the fresh cream in his elephant foot bun.

‘You can’t be serious about him,’ I said to Lottie when he’d skipped off down the garden to help THE BERSERKERS carry the apple basket.

‘Why? Stop being so horrible to him,’ she said.

‘I can’t help it.’

‘He’s done nothing wrong.’

‘Yes he has. He’s got a name that doesn’t deserve a capital letter. And he’s scary. And he’s a social worker. And if you end up marrying him and having his babies he’ll want to give them names like Inigo and Milo and Nimrod and Rupert and Cosmo and Arlo and Jago and Barnaby and if it’s a girl he’ll want to call it Jocasta or Florence or Clarissa or Clementine or Philippa or Cressida or Octavia or… ‘

And she starts yapping on about how she hasn’t been seeing him for long so I shouldn’t even MENTION marriage or I’ll scare him off and she really, really likes him and the girls really, really like him and he’s the best thing that’s happened to her for YEARS, in fact the best thing that’s EVER happened to her, and she thinks she doesn’t just LIKE him, she thinks she LOVES him and she never thought she’d find love again, and if I do anything to spoil it she won’t speak to me for the rest of her life (tempting, that one).

So I promised I’ll be nice to him. And I tried (honest), but when Lottie went upstairs to the loo and I was standing at the back door with my ciggie and I asked him if I could be a bridesmaid because Lottie’s booked the church for next week, he SMILED at me again and he said, ‘Can I just say something, Dotty? Quite a few of my clients have mental health differences. I understand what you’re going through. You’re so brave.’

?

?

?

Brave?

Understand?

‘UNDERSTAND AND BRAVE THIS, YOU MIDDLE CLASS TOFU-SUCKING ECO-ARSED TWAT,’ and I kicked him in the goolies and hissy-whispered, ‘Now FUCK OFF and don’t come back,’ and he did, he looked up at me from his kicked-in-the-goolies bent double on the ground position like I was the most pitiful thing he’d ever seen, then he got himself up off the ground and he fucked off, not very quickly, he was hobbling and holding his groin. No dignity.

And when Lottie came downstairs and saw he wasn’t there she also looked at me, and she looked at me, and she looked at me, and she looked at me, and then, without saying a word, she went into the garden, got THE BERSERKERS, and they all fucked off too – WITHOUT BRINGING THE REST OF THE APPLES IN so now half my apples are rotting on the tree and I don’t have enough to make all the apple sauce and apple pies I usually make.

I’ll have to go now, I want to write a letter of complaint to Social Services about granola-tim to tell them how he called me a FUCKING PSYCHO and a MENTAL BASTARD and a LOONY and a WINDOW LICKER and SPECIAL. Not that it would bother me if he had, but it’ll bother THEM – when they get my letter they’ll all fall down in a weeping heap, wringing their hands and crying ‘How could he? How could he?’ and he’ll be sacked from his job and all he’ll have to live on are the ten bags of muesli he received as last month’s salary.

What I need, more than anyone in the history of the world has ever ever needed anything, is a TELEPORTER. Do any of you have one I can borrow? Please? It doesn’t have to be a fancy one with loads of dials and knobs and bells and whistles, all I want it to do is WHOOOOSH me up to my MEMORIAL BENCH and take me back home again when I get cold.

I WANT TO GO OUT

but to go out means PEOPLE and to go out with the aim of getting to my MEMORIAL BENCH where there are NO PEOPLE I’d have to encounter LOTS OF PEOPLE and I can’t do that because I have PEOPLE PHOBIA and then I’d have to get home again from my MEMORIAL BENCH where there are NO PEOPLE which means encountering LOTS OF PEOPLE once again, so it’s not just ONCE I’d have to encounter LOTS OF PEOPLE, it’s TWICE.

TELEPORTER.

Can I borrow it?

Or an INVISIBILITY CLOAK?

Like I’ve said before, the only person I know with an INVISIBILITY CLOAK is Harry Potter and I’m STILL writing and writing to the SCROOGEY LITTLE SCROTE but he won’t reply to my emails. WHY? He doesn’t NEED his INVISIBILITY CLOAK any more, why won’t he let me have it? That’s what being a fucking child celebrity brat has done for him, gone straight to his HEAD and given him DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR like he’s the GODKING OF ALL FILMS AND OF THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD when really he couldn’t act his way out of a soggy paper bag. DICKHEAD.

So can I borrow your TELEPORTER, please?

I won’t break it. I’ll look after it.

I’ll make you a HEAP of Cumberland sausage sandwiches.

And I’ll let you have ANYTHING YOU WANT FROM ANY OF MY COLLECTIONS (except my books).

AND you’ll be the FIRST and ONLY person in Bloggyland to SEE WHAT I LOOK LIKE and to COME INSIDE MY HOUSE where you can wait for me to come back and if you get bored you could have a little flick round with the duster to keep you occupied.

Yes I’m begging – what of it? There’s nothing wrong with begging if begging helps you to COLLECT THINGS.

And now I’m boasting and THANKING YOU FOR LOOKING AT MY BLOG A LOT – it’s just passed 20,000 views.

P.S. I’ve solved my elbow problem – I’m wearing protective bike pads and my thick leather motorbike jacket and I’ve got my Shoei crash helmet on in case my elbows get through the pads and the jacket – so now I can go to bed tonight and when I do I’m going to tie a pillow round each elbow to be on the safe side.

without all my Likes disappearing from every post so I might as well ask you all to GO AND CLICK THE LIKE BUTTON ON THAT PAGE (if you DO like it, if you don’t, don’t) because it’s my front page and if there has to be any Likes on it there might as well be A FUCKING GREAT BIG SHITLOAD OF THEM.

This blogging lark is quite cathartic, isn’t it? Writing about the shite I can’t talk to anyone else about is having a good effect on me, it’s making me reflect and it’s changing how I feel about certain things. For example, remorse.

Before I say anything else, I’m going to copy and paste a paragraph from the post I wrote on Valentine’s Day to save you the bother of having to click on a link (which you wouldn’t do anyway, so really I’m just making you read the bit I want you to read). This is the paragraph —

So today is the 3rd anniversary of THE DAY I KILLED SIMON. You might be wondering why I’m not banged up in the clinky (I know all the prison jargon, I watch LAW & ORDER UK). Well I DID go to prison but only while I was waiting for the trial and my prison wasn’t a general prison it was a sort of prison for the criminally insane. But I AM NOT CRIMINALLY INSANE and that was proved when JUDGE HACKISNACKERSOFF threw the case out on the very first day when she heard how Simon bought me A HOOVER for Valentine’s Day. NO card, NO chocolates, NO flowers – in her speech Judge Hackisnackersoff said his actions “reached depths of mental cruelty previously unheard of in this court.” She also said “The deceased deserved everything he got.” So here I am, and it’s all thanks to Judge Hackisnackersoff that I have my darling little blog at all.

So now you’ve read that bit you know I was acquitted of all charges by the lovely Judge Hackisnackersoff. But what I DIDN’T mention in that paragraph is the question she asked me JUST BEFORE she acquitted me – she said

“Are you remorseful?”

And I said ‘Yes, Judge Hackisnackersoff, I AM remorseful.’

And she believed me – because I was TELLING THE TRUTH.

Yes, I WAS remorseful about killing ex-Simon. Here’s a list of why —

1 — My nice curtains got ruined with blood stains and I had to throw them away.

2 — My nice cushion covers got ruined with blood stains and I had to throw them away (but luckily my sofa didn’t, it’s a leather oxblood Chesterfield and all it needed was a wash and a wipe).

3 — My good carpet got ruined with blood stains and I haven’t been able to afford to replace it.

4 — Dibble took all my guns away – (I’m okay now, Scotty gave me his old sniper rifle and another little present and I’m building an impressive collection of other protective weapons — oh, that reminds me, WHY HAVE YOU STOPPED DONATING TO MY CANNON FUND?)

5 — Errmm. Hmmm. Nope, I can’t remember the fifth reason.

So yes, I WAS full of remorse for what I did, how could I not be, if I didn’t feel remorse I’d be a heartless psychopath, something I’ve always wished to be because heartless psychopaths don’t give two diddly fucks about ANYTHING. But what I’ve now realised is the remorse I was full of was the WRONG REMORSE, I was remorseful for the WRONG REASONS, I was remorseful about the WRONG THINGS. My reasons were selfish, ALL ABOUT ME, not about ex-Simon who should have been taken into account because he was the one who got killed.

So I’ve thought about it a lot and I’ve revised my reasons for being remorseful to include ex-Simon. Here’s a list of THE NEW REASONS WHY I AM REMORSEFUL –

1 — Cleaning. NO ONE cleaned the house like ex-Simon did, NO ONE, and it’s starting to get manky again – Scotty and Lottie obviously didn’t do it properly last week, the clatty fuckers.

2 — The way ex-Simon died. If I hadn’t acted on impulse, if I’d just taken a few minutes to stop and think about it, I could have been more INVENTIVE IN MY METHOD of killing him – there are SO many other ways I could have done it that would have been less BASIC and CRUDE than shooting him in the face, cleverer, more thoughtful ways. Yes, I think this is what I’m MOST remorseful about. Poor ex-Simon, even though he deserved to die (as Judge Hackisnackersoff said) I’m now thinking he deserved a BETTER way to die.

Hang on, was that PITY FOR EX-SIMON I just felt?

No, never mind, it’s gone, I don’t know what it was.

Perhaps it WAS pity. That’s a new one, if it was.

So there you have it, writing my blog is changing me for the better.

Oh, if you want to know what happened on the day I killed him you can read the statement I gave to Dibble by clicking on this link —

Not that I go out in the rain, I don’t, because I CAN’T GO OUT but the rain makes too much NOISE battering on my windows. And there’s no sunshine or blueness, there’s only a BIG GLOOMY SKY FILLED WITH RAINCLOUDS.

But I suppose I should be grateful because at least our Northern rain is PROPER RAIN, it comes down fast and hard in bucket-loads, not like Southern rain which is SOFT and PIDDLY and PISSY just like the Southerners it falls on. And don’t any of you Southerners start moaning at me, because I know what you’re all up to, I know YOU WANT TO STEAL OUR RAIN.

You want to STEAL OUR RAIN because YOU HAVEN’T GOT ANY OF YOUR OWN. You want to STEAL OUR RAIN and have it piped all the way down the country into your big soft houses so you can water your big soft lawns and wash your big posh cars and leave US without any to drink. Well you can PISS OFF, it’s OUR RAIN, haven’t you got enough of everything else down there – you’ve got all the jobs, all the money, all the EVERYTHING and all we have is OUR RAIN, the same rain you LAUGH AT and COMPLAIN ABOUT if you’re ever forced into coming UP NORTH.

So no, you CAN’T HAVE IT.

Why don’t you ask your daytrip chunnel pals, France, if you can have some of their rain? I bet I know what they’ll say – NON with some French swear words to follow but I don’t know any French swear words apart from ‘casse toi’ which might be appropriate but just as likely it’s not. Oh, I also know ‘merde’ so they might say NON, CASSE TOI, TU TÊTE DE MERDE (that sounds good).

It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.

There’s so much rain coming down, rain-rain, gallons and gallons of it, and the grass looks so GREEN and LUSH.

In fact we have so MUCH rain that we might just have to throw some of it away, into the NORTH SEA, because we wouldn’t want to spill a drop or two and have it roll DOWN SOUTH.

I might stick the hosepipe out of the window to water my flowers just in case the rain stops for a second or two and they get thirsty.

I’ve resolved the pen problem to the mutual satisfaction of both parties and I get to keep the beautiful, pure white swan feather pen.

What happened is I had a bright idea so I sent Papa Brontë a BALLPOINT pen, to be precise it was a Papermate Flexigrip ultra pen (black) but three hours later Branwell came back and I had to give him ANOTHER Papermate Flexigrip ultra pen because his father’s first instinct when he realised the Papermate Flexigrip ultra pen didn’t have to be dipped in his inkwell was to throw it on the fire and scream

‘WHAT IS THIS DEVILRY ? WHY DO YOU BRING TO MY GOD-FEARING HOUSE THIS VILE, UNHOLY STICK FILLED WITH THE PUTRID, BLACK SALIVA OF SATAN? BEGONE, CHANGELING, YOU ARE NO SON OF MINE – EVILDOER, DEFILER, OFFENDER OF CHRIST. BEGONE, I SAY!’

Little Emily managed to calm him down while Branwell went outside for a smoke and a sip of laudanum. She showed him her own Bic pens (I gave her two packs of three) and convinced him that if he allowed Branwell to get another Papermate Flexigrip ultra pen from me it could be made holy with a full exorcism before use. Now he likes it so much he’s sent me a note requesting more, in different colours.

So that’s all sorted, but what isn’t sorted is the fact that MY TELLY IS FUCKED. It won’t switch on. It’s a FUCKEDBOX OF SHITE and I don’t know why. Last night it was working fine, no problems, then when I switched it on this morning (I don’t watch it, I just like having the little telly people in the room with me), NOTHING not a flicker, not a bleep, not a fizzle. I’ve wiggled the wires, I’ve smacked the fucker hard, I’ve given it a shake, NOTHING.

IT’S FUCKED.

I’ve got another telly, a little one, in the spare room where Scotty sleeps when he stays BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO WIRE IT UP TO MY TELLY-BOX and if I try to do it by myself I’ll fuck that up as well.

Have you ever seen a pen so beautiful you just have to have it? I have a penchant for pens. Before I caught Hermititis and People Phobia what would happen is I’d spot a pen and fall in love with it and from the moment I set eyes on it I would be filled with NEED. I really and truly NEEDED those pens, each and every one of them, and if I didn’t get them, if I didn’t HAVE and POSSESS them, I would have DIED. But there were loads of tricky times when the pens I NEEDED belonged to someone else. Actually, every pen I NEEDED was in the possession of someone else and strangely I never NEEDED the pens I saw in the shops, those I could pay for and just OWN, they didn’t interest me.

My collection of pens is huge and vast and if you stood at the coast and lined up all my pens from top to nib they’d be longer than the longest peninsula. I’m not so keen on pencils, they don’t have the same penetratingly gorgeous LURE of pens and the lead always snaps when you press too hard and I can never find a pencil sharpener when I need one. And those fancy, posh pencils you click like a pen and the thin bit of lead comes down – they’re nothing but SHITE, I don’t like them, they’re the stupidest, most wasteful pencils in the world, click too many times and SNAP, don’t click enough times and WHERE THE FUCK IS IT, click some more to make it appear and SNAP — SNAP SNAP SNAP — they should be banned, I bet they cause more distress than any other writing implement except maybe crayons.

And I think I’m in trouble again because of my love for pens. I’ve been falsely accused of STEALING A PEN, one of Papa Brontë’s pens, a beautiful, pure white swan feather pen that was just LYING THERE ON THE MANTLEPIECE, all alone and neglected and there was a speck of SOOT on it that I carefully blew off so it wouldn’t MARK and MAR the beautiful, pure white swan feather pen, and I MOVED the beautiful, pure white swan feather pen away from the sooty, dirty mantlepiece to another place that wasn’t sooty or dirty and that place just happened to be MY SUITCASE and now Branwell has been here accusing me of THIEVING the beautiful, pure white swan feather pen and because of his fucking CHEEK I’m not giving it back.

I’m back. Sorry I couldn’t leave an absence note, I didn’t have time. Little Emily was taken ill and it was all a bit of a rush, Branwell came to get me in his carriage and I only had a few minutes to pack my case. Charlotte and Anne were away visiting which only left me and my debatable skills but I must have done something right, she’s much better now.

Panic attacks – I had many. Meltdown – I almost had one but I didn’t, I raided Branwell’s laudanum cupboard instead (he didn’t mind).

You wouldn’t think so but the worse thing was that the Victorians are noisy sods, they love banging and clanging their metal in the mills and the forges, even the kids play with big metal hoops – and those fucking horseshoes on the cobbles – my ears are driving me loopy after all that, I need a lot of quiet so if anyone comes in can you please keep the volume down. Thank you.

…but to keep you coming back to my blog so I still get loads of views,

and so I can get to 300 followers before La Popinjay does,

and so you don’t fuck off to some other blogger who talks to you more,

and so I can feel like I’m not ignoring you all (y’all) while I get on with ANOTHER THING

here’s a question —

What’s white and flies through the air faster than the speed of light?

RULES

There are two correct answers, either one of which I’ll accept.

If more than one of you get a correct answer I’ll do eeny-meeny-miney-mo to decide.

Or I might do ip-dip-dog-shit instead, it depends how I feel.

The winner will be my SUPREME PET FOR THE DAY tomorrow.

Here’s a picture to keep you entertained. I know everyone likes pictures and I know if I could put pictures in all my posts my views and my followers would be in the ZABILLIONS by now, but I can’t do it properly, it always goes wrong, I’ll NEVER be good with pictures and one day you’ll all go away to find blogs with pictures and this one of the SHOE-CAR has taken me over an hour of the time I was going to spend on ANOTHER THING so I hope you like it.

This is a shoe but it's also a CAR!! Fucking amazing what they can do nowadays.I want this SHOE-CAR. I want it.

Hello, fellow She-Hermits and Hermits. Today we’re going to talk about safety procedures for when you LIE ON THE FLOOR. I wonder if you’ve ever considered the DANGERS associated with lying on the floor, DANGERS that can MAIM or even KILL you, DANGERS that no one else will bother to tell you about because no one else gives two flying fucks about your lying on the floor habits. Well don’t worry, I’m here to help you and I’m writing this especially for YOU because I’m nice and kind like that.

So let’s get started.

POSITIONING – DANGERS OF THE FOETAL POSITION

Most floor-lying hermits prefer to lie in the FOETAL POSITION and most floor-lying hermits return again and again to THE SAME SPOT on the floor to lie in the FOETAL POSITION. We’ll discuss lying in THE SAME SPOT later – right now I’m concerned about THE HARM YOU ARE DOING TO YOUR SPINE.

SPINAL INJURY or BEING CRIPPLED FOR LIFE is a real and prevalent DANGER for hermits who choose to lie in the FOETAL POSITION for long periods of time. Your spine is supposed to be a STRAIGHT THING, evolution made the adult human spine straight in order to keep you UPRIGHT AND READY TO RUN AWAY – so how are you going to RUN AWAY if you can’t walk? YOU’RE NOT, you’ll be EATEN by lions or tigers or wolves or bears or hyenas or mad dogs or feral children or whatever else gets a sniff of you lying there, on the floor, in the FOETAL POSITION.

If you’re lucky and manage to escape being EATEN, the next time you lie on the floor in the FOETAL POSITION might be the last time you have a STRAIGHT BACK. The spine isn’t made of steel, it’s made of bone, and contrary to what most people believe about bone being hard and unbendable, BONE IS VERY BENDY and if you persist and persist in bending it into the FOETAL POSITION it will stay there and you’ll develop a pronounced HUMF and being a PEOPLE PHOBIC HERMIT is bad enough without being a PEOPLE PHOBIC HERMIT with a HUMFY-BACK.

Not only can the FOETAL POSITION give you a big HUMF, it can also lead to PARALYSIS OF EVERY PART OF YOUR BODY caused by SEVERED NERVES, so BEWARE and BE AWARE of any NUMBNESS or LOSS OF SENSATION because what might be happening is you are SEVERING YOUR NERVES and BECOMING PARALYSED but you won’t know this is happening until you want to get up to go for a wee or get a drink and you find you CAN’T GET UP BECAUSE YOU HAVE PARALYSED YOURSELF by lying on the floor in the FOETAL POSITION. If your legs are the limbs that become paralysed you should be okay because you’ll be able to use your arms to drag yourself across the floor to the phone, but if your arms are the limbs that become paralysed I’m afraid YOU’RE FUCKED because you won’t be able to drag yourself to the phone and even if you somehow managed to, how would you pick up the phone to ring for help?

Other DANGERS of lying on the floor in the FOETAL POSITION include –

BALD PATCHES – if no air or light can get to one side of your head because it’s flat on the carpet then you shouldn’t worry about illness or disease when your hair starts to come out in clumps, your baldness is caused by lying on the floor in the FOETAL POSITION.

CARPET BURN – caused by getting down onto the floor or getting up off the floor too quickly. Also caused by writhing around on the floor in the throes of despair. Be careful not to get carpet burn on your knees or people will think things.

DELUSIONS OF DEATH which occur when you’ve been there for so long that when you try to move you don’t know if the stiffness of your body is due to JUST STIFFNESS or if you’re stiff like a plank because RIGOR MORTIS HAS SET IN and this results in you having to deal with DIBBLE and AMBULANCE and SORE JAGS IN THE ARSE when you ring them up to tell them you are DEAD.

OTHER DANGERS OF LYING ON THE FLOOR

SPIDERS. BIG HAIRY MEATY SPIDERS and other creepy crawlies. Included in the list of creepy crawlies (I’m not making a list, I can’t be arsed) are the microscopic creepy crawlies that live in your carpet. Fuck knows WHAT they are but it’s guaranteed they carry all types of dirty diseases and THEY WILL WALK ON YOUR FACE AND ENTER THE INSIDE OF YOUR BODY THROUGH YOUR ORIFICES.

DEHYDRATION – keep a bottle of water next to you

STARVATION – if you’ve got your bottle of water you’ll be okay because you can go without food longer than you can without water.

NEEDING A WEE – this one’s easy – GET UP AND GO FOR A WEE, STUPID. You’re not a fucking baby.

BECOMING USED TO ONE PARTICULAR SPOT ON THE FLOOR – we’re going to deal with this next –

BECOMING USED TO ONE PARTICULAR SPOT ON THE FLOOR

As stated above, most hermits return again and again to the same spot on the floor. This is just a bad habit that can take some time and effort to break but it’s worth it in the end, the benefits you’ll reap will ASTOUND you.

Whether it’s facing your sofa, the underneath of your coffee table, your bookcases, your sideboard or just a blank wall, EVERY hermit has a favourite spot on the floor they like to lie on. But did you know that CHANGING THE SPOT ON THE FLOOR THAT YOU LIE ON can be so beneficial and good for you that it can CUREYOU OF LYING ON THE FLOOR?

Yes, it can. Don’t believe me? Read on –

Hermits who lie on the floor do so for one of two reasons —

1 they are in the throes of despair

2 they are too apathetic to do anything else

It doesn’t matter WHY you’re still lying on the floor after I’ve taken the time and trouble to spell out all the DANGERS, the fact that you’re still there at all tells me you really, really need TO CHANGE YOUR SPOT.

Before we go any further I know many of you will only have THE ONE SPOT to lie in because your collections have sprawled all over the place or because you’re just a clatty tramp and you don’t clean your house. TIDYING UP will provide NEW SPOTS FOR LYING ON THE FLOOR so get on with it, do it NOW, this minute before you think about it, don’t read another word, go and MAKE SOME NEW SPACES.

Done? Okay.

Whether you’re apathetic or despairing, a NEW SPOT ON THE FLOOR will change your life. You won’t like it to begin with, no one likes CHANGE, but persevere and the benefits will soon become apparent.

Lying on the floor in a NEW SPOT will instantly give you a NEW VIEW and a NEW VIEW is the best thing you can have because it provides a DISTRACTION from the apathy or despair that put you on the floor in the first place. Who can remain in a state of OVERWHELMING APATHY when confronted with a 4 inch CLUMP OF DUSTAND WEB under the sideboard that you’ve never noticed before? Who can remain in a state of ALL-CONSUMING DESPAIR whilst staring at the natural beauty of the wooden chair leg? A NEW SPOT will provide MOTIVATION and MENTAL STIMULATION and we’re on the road to BEING CURED.

After a few practices, each time in a NEW SPOT, if you STILL haven’t stopped lying on the floor in the FOETAL POSITION, try lying on the floor FLAT ON YOUR BACK. No hermit does this naturally or without distress because lying on the floor FLATON YOUR BACK makes you feel too EXPOSED and one benefit of lying in the FOETAL POSITION is you can’t see what’s coming for you, whether it’s a BIG HAIRY MEATY SPIDER or a BEAR. Also, lying on the floor FLAT ON YOUR BACK and LOOKING UP AT THE CEILING makes your room look MASSIVE LIKE THE WORLD and then you feel even more insignificant than you do already.

But for your own bodily safety, lying on the floor FLAT ON YOUR BACK is the best position to be in if you still insist on lying on the floor because it’s good for your back, it’s good for your posture, and it doesn’t cause HUMFS or PARALYSIS or DEATH BY RIGOR MORTIS.

I apologise for all the BIG SHOUTY WORDS I’ve used but hermits, you have to listen to me, if you won’t stop lying on the floor at least take PROPER PRECAUTIONS.

I wanted to know what it felt like to be my telly – sitting there in the corner for the whole of its life, unable to move, people staring at it for hours and hours on end and then it conks out and dies – I felt sorry for it, it must be a sad old life. And I wanted to see what my telly sees from where it’s sitting and I’ll tell you something, it’s given me a whole different view of my living room – it looks nice from up there, I saw my collections from different angles, I saw my bookcases from different angles, I saw my couch and chairs from different angles and I noticed what a good job Lottie and Scotty did when they cleaned everywhere – I actually saw THE CARPET.

I had a bit of trouble getting up because of all my butterfly-stitched fork-stabs that are scabbing over nicely, thank you for asking (some of them pulled a bit and came open when the scab ripped off but I washed all the blood off when I got down). My telly is old and fat with a massive back, not one of those slim things that I don’t understand why they made in the first place because where do all the LITTLE TELLY PEOPLE live now? Is this how the telly companies have got rid of some of my favourite programmes, they’ve had a PROGRAMME POGROM and driven away all the LITTLE TELLY PEOPLE like others did in THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES and THE JEWISH PEOPLE CLEARANCES and all the other ethnic clearances that have taken place. EXCEPT NO ONE HAS SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THE LITTLE TELLY PEOPLE CLEARANCES. Why? WHY NOT? It’s not fair. Just because they’re LITTLE doesn’t mean they don’t have the same rights as everyone else. Just because they live inside our tellys doesn’t mean they’re not entitled to stay in their homes, to live their lives the way they want to with SPACE ENOUGH TO LIVE COMFORTABLY. All these horrible things go on in the world and no one says DICKY-FUCKING-BOO about them.

It made me cry last night when I was on my telly thinking about how they must be living now, so I got down and went to find my BIG FUCK-OFF SCREWDRIVER which was in my cutlery drawer so I got a fork as well and I used them both to prise the back off my telly to see if I could help the LITTLE TELLY PEOPLE but do you know what? THEY WEREN’T ANYWHERE TO BE SEEN. They’ve FUCKING DISAPPEARED and I know WHY they’ve disappeared, they’re so frightened, so HARASSED and PLAGUED and TORMENTED by their CRUEL PERSECUTORS – and that means YOU, YES YOU WITH THE FUCKING SLIMLINE TELLY – that they’ve run away from my telly, their SANCTUARY, probably the ONLY SAFE PLACE FOR THEM IN BRITAIN.

You want me to write a post about you so you can steal EVEN MORE OF MY FOLLOWERS and PRETEND THEY WERE YOURS TO START WITH and that’s fine, here I am writing a post about you because I’m nice and kind like that, but really, all you had to do was ask.

So go on everyone, go and join the old goat’s blog, he NEEDS you, he’s DESPERATE, so DESPERATE he copied my 200 FOLLOWERS badge and pretended it was his own because he couldn’t bear to think I’d beat him to 200, just like he copies EVERYTHING of mine. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – NO IT’S NOT, IT’S JUST COPYING, YOU NUMPTY so find your own ideas, stop nicking mine.

And he called me a THIEF. Well I’m NOT a convicted thief, Dibble gave me Cautions each time.

Is he hopeless?

Is he useless?

Is he desperate?

Is the Pope waterproof?

YES to all of the above – but pity La Popinjay, please, my lovelies. Charity is good for the soul.

P.S. You’re probably thinking, ‘Why should I bother going to see a blog written by a BABBLING INGRATE?‘ and you’d be correct in thinking that so to be honest I’d advise you to GO HERE INSTEAD.

P.P.S. OY, ARSEWIPE – I don’t live in a flat so GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT. Shows how much you actually READ.

Hello everybody. Sorry I couldn’t do a post yesterday, I was too knackered to write one. Why was I too knackered? Because I went OUT.

O-U-T spells OUT.

OUT is the opposite of IN.

That’s what I did, I went OUT.

For the second time this year.

I’m a social butterfly with butterfly stitches. I bought butter. And I saw a fly, a big fucker that must have got IN the car when we were getting OUT of the car but luckily Lottie spotted it before we got back IN the car and she opened the door and the fly flew OUT.

And fuck-diddly-fuck, wouldn’t you just know it, 24 hour Tesco had Cumberland sausages on offer – buy one get one free – so I bought fucking loads and loads and got the same again for nothing.

It all happened IN a similar way to when I went OUT last time (see Dotty And Scotty Go Shopping) except this time Lottie came with us so I wasn’t left alone when Scotty did his recce of the aisles. And we went to 24 hour Tesco later than we did last time, yesterday we set off at 5.00 am which would have been impossible if I hadn’t dosed up on double beta-blockers, double anti-depressives, two vials of laudanum and a swig of Diet Coke to wash it all down. And THE BERSERKERS came too and they proved to be a great distraction for me and a great help when Lottie went off to the toilet – when a person happened to be IN the aisle I wanted to go down what they did is they walked up to the person who was looking at whatever they were looking at on the shelf, stood right up close to them, very still and very straight, and THE BERSERKERS looked up at them and kept looking up at them, and kept looking up at them, and kept looking up at them with their big wide starey little-girl eyes until the person got freaked out and ran away.

I’m loving THE BERSERKERS so much more than I ever thought I would.

So we got all the shopping and sent Scotty off to pay for it while Lottie and me and THE BERSERKERS had a wander round the non-food aisles. And that’s when I saw it – the perfect thing, the absolutely perfect thing that I have always wanted – the bench – THE BENCH that is made of solid dark wood and has little carvings of love hearts on the back, the bench that is BEAUTIFUL and LOVELY and COMFORTABLE with thick slats for your bum to sit nicely on, the bench that was advertised as a garden bench but I didn’t buy it for my garden, I bought it so I could screw my MEMORIAL PLAQUE onto it and put it on the HIGH SPOT ON THE MOORS that I used to love walking to, the spot that has a view to die for, the spot that I want my ashes scattered on when I am DEAD. So I bought it.

My MEMORIAL BENCH was too big to fit IN the car because of all the shopping and US even though the car is a big posh one, so Scotty took us and the shopping home and then he went back to collect my MEMORIAL BENCH. While he was gone Lottie put all the shopping away while I looked for my MEMORIAL PLAQUE which was where I thought it was, IN the top drawer of my desk. This is what my MEMORIAL PLAQUE says —

This bench belongs to

DOTTY HEADBANGER

19?? – 20??

If you write on Dotty’s bench

she will haunt you

for the rest of your pitiful life.

When Scotty came back with my MEMORIAL BENCH he asked where I wanted him to put it.

‘Put it? I’m not putting it anywhere, it’s going up to its SPOT ON THE MOORS. Now. When I’ve eaten my Cumberland sausage sandwich.’

He looked at Lottie and I could see by the way they looked at each other that they didn’t think I could go OUT twice IN the one day so I tried to reassure them – ‘It’s okay, I’ll take more medication’.

They looked at each other again. Lottie said, ‘Have you got something planned, Dotty?’

‘Yes, I’ve got it all planned – Scotty can screw my MEMORIAL PLAQUE onto my MEMORIAL BENCH then me and Scotty can go IN his car with my MEMORIAL BENCH and you and the girls can go IN yours.’

‘What else have you got planned?’

‘Oh. I didn’t think of anything else – should we take a picnic?’

‘I meant…’ she looked at Scotty again, ‘I meant have you got plans to… you know?’

‘What?’

Scotty looked at ME instead of at Lottie. ‘Fucking ‘ell, Dotty, are you going to top yourself?’

‘HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA — is that what you think? Well no I’m not, not today you divvy sods – I’ve just spent ninety quid on shopping. And a hundred and fifty on my bench.’

‘But memorial benches are for dead people. Their families buy them as a MEMORIAL and put them in a place their dead one loved. You’re not dead.’

I just laughed at them again and went for a wee before we set off. No I’m not dead – and that’s why I’ve been planning for years to buy my own MEMORIAL BENCH – why should a seat appear for me WHEN I CAN’T USE IT BECAUSE I’M DEAD? Why shouldn’t I have somewhere nice to sit when I’ve just slogged my way up a big fucking hill to look at the view? And ALSO – when everything’s back to normal and Scotty and Lottie and THE BERSERKERS have gone home and it’s just me and little Emily again, if I have my MEMORIAL BENCH to visit it might make me GET OUT OF THIS FUCKING HOUSE THAT I CAN’T GET OUT OF.

So we took my MEMORIAL BENCH up to the HIGH SPOT ON THE MOORS and set it in place (Scotty brought my shovel with him and I made him stop off on the way to buy a bag of ready-mixed concrete). The wind wasn’t too bad for March and the ground wasn’t boggy either because it’s been freezing these last few days so me and THE BERSERKERS had a wild old time racing up the hill (they beat me, I ran like a lame old donkey because of my butterfly stitched places). I asked Lottie and Scotty to take THE BERSERKERS for a walk so I could be OUTSIDE on my own for a while. Lottie made sure I had my Nokia Hard Bastard with me to ring her if I needed to and off they went.

I can’t describe how I felt when they’d disappeared out of sight, it was too lovely for words, but the BIG SKY was beautiful, I sat on my bench for ages and ages looking for faces in the clouds. I saw King George III, Muhammed Ali, Van Gogh, Jimmy Krankie, Britney Spears and I think it was Julius Caesar or more likely it was Caligula.

It wasn’t as quiet as I thought it would be, but it was a BETTER sort of noisy, no FUCKINGMACHINERY, just birds and breeze and the odd baa from a sheep. It was the closest to silence I’ll ever get until I’m dead and I want to go there again soon. I WILL go there again soon because now I’ve got my MEMORIAL BENCH up there to park my arse on for a rest.

When we got home I went upstairs to rewrite my will — what they have to do is get me a basket coffin (basket case when living, basket case when dead), carry me up to the HIGH SPOT ON THE MOORS, make a big bonfire, chuck me and my basket coffin INTO the fire, eat a few Cumberland sausages and sing a little song but I don’t know what song yet, it’s a toss up between I’ll Fly Away by Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch and Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf.

I’m living in my tumble dryer. Don’t worry, it’s only till Scotty and Lottie have got rid of all the MEAN THINGS in my house. I’ve taken all my beta-blockers so I won’t have a panic attack and disturb all my neat bandages or make my elbows and knees more sore than they already are from April Fool’s Day, and I’ve got my bottle of laudanum with me, and I’ve sneaked in my mini hand-drill in case I really need it, and the hospital gave me TWO jags in the arse last night – some whizzy floaty stuff that’s still working and some superwhoppy painkiller – and that’s how I’m able to tell you all about it.

It’s quite comfortable in here. I’m sitting with my legs crossed and my laptop on my lap (is it still a lap if your legs are crossed or is it a clap or a crap or a clop or a crop) and I can see everything that’s going on in my kitchen through my round window (I always chose the round window in Playschool – HAMBEL! BIG TED! LITTLE TED! JEMIMA! – oh, I’ve got a Jemima, she’s sitting on the sidebar) and I can hear everything that’s going on too and they can hear me but the metal echo hurts my ears a lot when I shout.

Have you ever seen a crack assassin wield a feather duster? Scotty is so PRECISE and EXACT. He’s like MERCENARY MARY POPPINS except he’s bigger and he can’t sing. And he’s scared of children. I thought he’d try and use dusting as an excuse to get rid of more of my collections but – get this! – LOTTIE won’t let him, she said all he’s allowed to do is move something to DUST IT AND DUST WHERE IT LIVES and then PUT IT BACK IN ITS PLACE.

wOw

Do you want to know why they’re here? Shall I tell you what happened?

No, I don’t think I will.

beep

‘LOTTIE! THE FUCKING DRYER JUST BEEPED!’

‘It didn’t, I’ve switched it off at the wall.’

‘Oh. Right you are then.’

I was only kidding – of course I’ll tell you it. Why wouldn’t I? I love you all (y’all).

It was Anette’sfault – she scared me last night when she told me there are MEAN THINGS in my house. After the first four panic attacks, when the laudanum and the beta blockers started to kick in, I did what she said and got all my cutlery out and laid it round me on my bed, then I wrapped myself in tin foil but I didn’t have enough to cover all of me, I managed to cover everywhere except from my left knee down AND THAT’S WHERE THEY GOT IN. I felt them slithering up my leg (I had my short-leg pyjama bottoms on) and then they started biting me but it wasn’t really biting it was more like suck-biting, like vampire leeches and then they were all over me inside the tin foil slithering suck-biting slithering suck-biting and I was screaming and I grabbed some forks and tried to kill them, legs STAB arms STAB belly STABneck STABface STAB head STAB STAB STAB STAB STAB everywhere all over me and I couldn’t kill them, they wouldn’t get off me I killed one and twenty more slithered onto me I screamed and screamed and STABBED and STABBED and they kept coming and coming and then BIG ONES came ROARINGROARINGROARING my name and they grabbed my arms and I knew they’d eat me if I didn’t fight back so I STABBED and KICKED and BIT and NUTTED them but MORE BIG ONES grabbed my legs and my head and my middle and pinned me down and I thought that’s it, I’m for it now but I wasn’t, they ripped the tinfoil off my face and they weren’t BIG MEAN THINGS they were DIBBLE and AMBULANCE and they were all swearing and shouting and one was holding his blood-spurty nose and another was bent double holding his balls and that’s all I remember until I woke up in hospital and Scotty and Lottie were there.

I’ve got 78 butterfly stitches. It sounds a lot but they’re spread all over me in twos and threes with one big one on my neck that needed seven butterly stitches. It doesn’t hurt but I think it will later on when the super-whoppy painkiller wears off.

So Scotty and Lottie – Dibble went for them and took them to where I was, in hospital, and they told me that when they arrived I was out for the count so they waited for me to wake up. While they were waiting Lottie went to get some drinks and that’s when a FEMALE HEADSHRINKER came down from upstairs to do her voodoo on me but Scotty used all his charm and wiles and (Scotty told me this bit later, Lottie doesn’t know) he took her in a toilet cubicle and SHAGGED THE SENSE OUT OF HER, love at first sight, beautiful, marry you, my darling, my only one, four kids, I LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU, and when I woke up they brought me home and the first thing I did when we got home is pretend I needed a wee so I could go upstairs for my laudanum and my mini hand-drill and then I ran (hobbled) downstairs and grabbed my laptop and got inside the tumble dryer. The first thing Scotty did when we got home was ring THE BIG CHIEF INSPECTOR and as a result of his phone call they’re not coming to charge me with GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM any more. The first thing Lottie did when we got home is make us a pile of Cumberland sausage sandwiches.

Both of them sat on the kitchen floor, outside the tumble dryer, to eat their Cumberland sausage sandwiches at the same time as I was eating mine. Lottie made me tell her about the MEAN THINGS and after I’d finished telling her she said

So they’ve been cleaning EVERYWHERE AND EVERYTHING in my house and Lottie isn’t letting Scotty slack off at all, she’s bossing him round like a Sergeant Major. And they keep bringing me drinks of Diet Coke and the odd Cumberland sausage when I want one and about half an hour ago little Emily popped her head round the back door and her eyes were as big as saucers when she saw me in the tumble dryer but a second later when she noticed Scotty dusting a shelf her eyes became HUGE, like glittery frisbees, and I thought ‘Dear jesus, no, please don’t let it happen,’ but it was too late, I couldn’t stop it – THE THUNDERBOLT and she hasn’t taken her eyes off him since.

Bits of me are starting to sting.

Come on, Lottie and Scotty – hurry up with cleaning out the MEAN THINGS, I need a wee and I need a sleep.

I’m going to try and have a sleep in here, my eyes keep shutting and I can’t stand that stupid look on little Emily’s face.

There’s something strange afoot in Dottyworld. Mischief is being made somewhere, somehow and I need to get it sorted before something unfixable happens. As you should know by now I don’t have any mirrors in my house, nor do I have any shiny surfaces. It’s hard to catch a glimpse of myself ANYWHERE and that’s how I like it, if I wanted mirrors I wouldn’t have smashed them all. But this afternoon, when the sun shone bright through the window and hit the lid of my frying pan, I DID catch a glimpse of myself (more than a glimpse – about 7 seconds worth of glimpse before I jumped back, which doesn’t sound long but you try looking at something for 7 seconds and it’s longer than you think it should be).

I say I caught a glimpse of myself – well that’s not quite true because although I SHOULD have caught a glimpse of myself I didn’t, I caught a long 7 second glimpse of LITTLE EMILY. Except little Emily went home early this morning to make sure Charlotte isn’t taking the piss out of Anne again by getting her to do all the cleaning. And she hasn’t been back since, and she isn’t due back till tomorrow.

So how did I see her in the frying pan lid?

Little Emily is dead – I’ve seen her grave many times over the years, I know she’s in there but obviously SHE isn’t in there, and anyway it’s not a secret that I SEE DEAD PEOPLE, lots of people see dead people, they even make telly programmes about people who see dead people so it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But seeing dead people when it should be ME I’m seeing is a bit eerie.

At first I thought maybe it’s because we’ve become such good friends and I see her face much more than I see my own and the facial recognition part of my brain has forgotten what MY face looks like so it slapped little Emily’s face onto the frying pan lid instead.

Then I thought I wonder if it’s me, I wonder if I’ve finally lost it, but then I thought ‘No, Dotty, don’t be daft, you’re mental but you’re not fucking MENTAL‘.

Then I thought it must be something to do with little Emily’s ectoplasm, maybe it’s fucked up because she’s doing something she shouldn’t be doing like eating too many of my Cumberland sausages, or trying to follow Rah Rah Rasputin on Just Dance 2 (or 3? I can’t remember, she puts it on herself, I don’t like it), or killing wabbits for her wabbit pies, or looking after Branwell when he’s in a fugue, or arguing with Charlotte, or too much writing writing writing, or any number of things she does that I don’t even know about, who knows what she gets up to on that fucking moor every morning, there are more dead people roaming around up there than soft Mick, she could be doing anyTHING with anyONE of them.

All or none of these things could be the cause of what happened earlier and that’s what I need help with – knowledge of ghosts. If any of you know anything at all about ghosts will you tell me please so I can try and work out what’s wrong with little Emily and why she appeared on my face? I don’t want to lose her, she’s the best friend I’ve ever had.

I had to. I don’t like April Fool’s Day, I’m scared of it and Little Emily can be a sod for practical jokes. It was okay being in the tumble dryer at first, it felt safe and warm because I’d just dried my towels but while I was having the panic attacks it got a bit uncomfortable and my elbows and knees hurt like fuck now, I think I can see the bruises starting to come out.

It’s all YOUR fault I had the panic attacks. And little Emily’s. Last night I was happy because of the 626 views you’ve done on my little blog. Little Emily was happy too, we had a feast of Cumberland sausages which she cooked so I didn’t have to do anything except sit back and eat. And I ate and ate and ate, not until I was SICK like Bonnie Langford who SCREAMED and SCREAMED and SCREAMED until she was sick, just until I FELT sick.

So there I was, sitting on my sofa at one o’clock in the morning, feeling sick, unable to move because my belly was like a big stone, when little Emily said, ‘Dotty, my dear friend, what if this is all a trick?‘

‘Eh? What?’

‘Your blog guests. They may be playing tricks on you.‘

‘What’re you on about?’

‘The statistics on your blog. What if they are an illusion, a despicable antic executed to make you THINK you have 626 views when really you do not?’

‘Shut up, idiot. I’ll show you it, it’s still on my stats page.’

‘Yes it is. But what if a secret group of infiltrating bloggers caused it to happen? Strange ne’er-do-wells lurk in Blogland too, my friend.’

‘And why the fuck would they do that? And WHO the fuck would do that? All the people on my blog are nice and kind and I love them.’

I never post three posts in one day because you all (y’all) will get fed up with me and unfollow me and leave me here all on my todd again if I annoy you with loads of posts, but I’m so amazed at the amount of VIEWS I’ve had today that I had to do another one just to say

THANK YOU FOR READING MY LITTLE BLOG EVERYONE

Today has been my busiest day with 626 views (FINAL TOTAL) which is a MASSIVE leap from 361 views which was my previous busiest day total. Now that might not seem like a lot to you big super bloggers who get thousands and thousands of views per day but to me it’s MAGIC! WONDERFUL! ASTOUNDING! Truly, it amazes me.

And it also amazes me how much you all (y’all) like SWEARING.

I LOVE IT!

EDIT EDIT EDIT – FINAL TOTAL 626 views. I AM FUCKING GOBSMACKED. 🙂

Here’s a little present for you – a picture –

Here a packet of sweets for you to eat, my present to you for reading my little blog. Thank you and I hope you like them.

In my travels around WordPress I’ve come across lots of blogs with DONATE buttons on them. The begging bloggers want people to give them money for many various reasons – they want to travel; they want to buy a house; they want to buy a new Gucci bag; they want to buy food for their children; they want to pay for granny to be put in a home – everyone has a different reason but each and every one of those reasons are STUPID and FRIVOLOUS.

I want a DONATE button for my little blog but MY reason is VERY IMPORTANT – I want to buy a CANNON and some CANNON BALLS. When I get my CANNON I’m going to knock a hole in my bricked-up front door and fit the CANNON BARREL into the hole and then cement round it so NOTHING can get in AND I’LL BE ABLE TO BLAST AWAY ANY FUCKERS WHO COME TO MY FRONT DOOR.

But I don’t know where to get a DONATE button. And if I do find out where to get one and I get one I won’t be able to fit it onto my little blog because I CAN’T EVEN DO PICTURES SO HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO A DONATE BUTTON?

So what I thought is you all (y’all) could just put the wedge of money you’re going to give me in an envelope (notes only please, Royal Mail will charge me if you put coins in the envelope) and send it to me through the proper post, but for obvious reasons you’re not getting my house address so you’ll have to wait until I’ve set up a Post Office box you can send it to. In the meantime, my lovely generous Followers and Readers, START SAVING YOUR MONEY FOR YOUR DOTTY TO BUY HER CANNON AND SOME CANNON BALLS – £20 notes and $50 notes, please (and the same in whatever currency you use) because you can get more money in the envelope with the higher value notes and it’ll save you money on postage in the long run because an envelope stuffed with higher value notes will cost the same to send as an envelope stuffed with lower value notes, I’ll just get less.

Give me your money and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing your Dotty is safe in her house and no fucker can get through the bricks.

I had a LOVELY day yesterday and no one spoilt it. Little Emily arrived with a big beautiful bunch of wildflowers for me that she gathered on her walk down to my house and she brought us an apple and gooseberry pie – when I first glimpsed the pie my innards flipped in disgust, I thought it was another Wabbit pie, but no, it was an apple and gooseberry pie and very yummy it was too. We ate it after we ate the Cumberland sausages and before we ate the plain Victoria Sponge Sandwich Cake (sorry, Judith, little Emily snaffled the last quarter that I’d saved for you) and everything we ate was scrummy and yummy and we stuffed our faces like the little greedy gannets we are.

After our feast we were too full to do anything so we sat and talked for a while. Then we got bored with talking so we decided to play a game – Scrabble, which is one of little Emily’s favourites of the games I’ve introduced her to (another favourite is Cluedo and another is Crazy Taxis – ‘Ram his arse, Dotty, ram it hard!’). I don’t really like playing Scrabble with little Emily, not because she always wins but because she’s so fucking SLOW to put a word down, her little hand goes back and forth from her letter holder to the board, from the board to her letter holder, and she umms and aahhhs and bites her lip and screws up her eyes and you’d think she was contemplating THE ORIGINS OF EVERYTHING not just whether ‘bat’ will give her more points than ‘cat’. But I was doing my best to be a good friend because I don’t mind telling you I’ve missed her and I don’t want to scare her away like I have with all my other friends. Sometimes I miss them too, but not often, they were all a set of bitches, the lot of them — except Kathryn, she was nice. I didn’t scare Kathryn off, she moved away and by the time I started answering my phone again she’d been gone for over two years and she’d stopped leaving messages on my answerphone. She’d given up on me, the cow.

Anyway, to cut a long happy day short, little Emily and I had a long happy day ending with little Emily deciding to stay the night. She made us a nice cup of hot chocolate to take up to bed and that’s when my leg got scalded, the dozy bint spilt hers down my shin and jesus christ and his nails it hurt like fuck, I let out a scream that should have shattered the windows but it didn’t, they’re all still intact. Little Emily ran for some water and came back with it in my TOOTHBRUSH MUG with my toothbrush still in it, I said ‘what the fuck do you want me to do with THAT, brush my teeth while MY LEG IS BUBBLING UP WITH BLISTERS?’ She ran downstairs and she was gone for AGES and when she came back she had a bowl with EGG WHITES in it, (she took so long because she’d been trying to separate the eggs and couldn’t do it without a bit of yolk going in it) and then she poured the EGG WHITES on the sore bit and said I had to sit still until the EGG WHITES dried, so I did, I sat as still as a fucking meringue.

I didn’t sleep much, as you’ll have probably guessed. And if I couldn’t sleep I was fucked if I was letting her have a good, restful night in the land of Noddy. No, I made her stay up with me and run round after me and feel guilty for CRIPPLING ME and BURNING A BIG HOLE IN MY LEG, THE SAME LEG THAT WILL SOON BE AMPUTATED BECAUSE GANGRENE WILL SET IN UNLESS I’M PROVIDED WITH A CONSTANT SUPPLY OF THE SPECIAL PROTEIN THAT’S FOUND ONLY IN CUMBERLAND SAUSAGES. It’s amazing what a Victorian will believe, you can tell them anything – as long as you say it’s been PROVED BY SCIENCE they’ll lap it up like scabby, starving kittens at their milk.

So off she went this morning to buy some more eggs from the farm they get their eggs from and I hope she remembers to bring me something nice to eat, I told her I need chocolate (Lindt, lots of it) it’s a proven fact that chocolate is good for the circulation and I need to keep my blood going round or my leg won’t heal and necrosis will set in and eat my leg and it’ll turn black and drop off. And ice-cream (Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food, 4 tubs) to help unthicken the chocolate as it works its way through my veins. And those little cheesecakes you get in packs of four, toffee ones (2 packs) because something in the process of putting cheese in a cheesecake results in essential nutrients being fast-tracked to the skin, ensuring rapid healing and the forming of good, healthy scar tissue.

I’m going to watch the first series of Dexter again with my leg up – it’s the best series of Dexter even though I know his brother did it – and wait for little Emily to come back with my goodies. Then she can make our dinner – Cumberland sausage sandwiches. And I’ll have a little cheesecake or two for my pudding. And then a bit of chocolate. And then a bit of ice cream. And then I’ll probably need a little sleep, but little Emily will be here to watch over me.

I’ve been up since stupid o’clock making preparations for when little Emily arrives later this morning. I made a big batch of Cumberland sausages yesterday, I made more this morning, I’ve CLEANED SOME THINGS like the kitchen worktops and the kitchen chairs and the kitchen table and I haven’t cleaned the kitchen floor yet because Numpty the Boilerman cleaned a section of it the other day and that’ll do for now, I’ve dusted my laptop with my funny little laptop duster (mine has eyes and it’s pink and it stands up on its one big foot) and I’ve emptied the kitchen bin but I haven’t put the rubbish out because I don’t want to have a panic attack this morning, I want to be all calm and collected when she arrives.

And today, fingers crossed that anyone still wants to read my little blog, I should reach – dah dah – 10,000 hits on my little blog AND I HAVE MADE A CAKE TO CELEBRATE and it’s a VICTORIA SPONGE SANDWICH CAKE, just a normal one, no added medicinal extras because little Emily likes her cakes plain. And I have a little sticker that lovely WordPress gave me yesterday for 1,000 likey-likes and let me just see if I can make it stay where I put it (I’m rubbish with pictures)

Please stick to the page.

I’m not showing off or anything (I’m not like that), I just NEED YOU TO SEE IT so fingers crossed it does what it’s told and doesn’t shag up my page.

I wonder if I’ll get a badge for my 10,000 hits? And I wonder WHO WILL BE NUMBER 10,000?

Anyone who reads my little blog knows that I’m an exceptionally tolerant She-Hermit. Live and let live, turn a blind eye, rise above it – they’re good ideals to live by, very good, but principles like that can lead to horrible people treating us like doormats, stomping all over us with their big honking feet, knowing we won’t retaliate because of the moral position we’re in.

But we CAN retaliate. We can get the fuckers back in ways their stupid, myopic little brains could never conceive of. Here’s how —

Sneaky Bastards At Work

We’ll begin with work colleagues. BASTARDS, THE LOT OF THEM – in particular those who hold positions just below yours – every single one of them is OUT TO STEAL YOUR JOB. Those who hold an equal position to your own are OUT TO STEAL YOUR PROMOTION. Those above you are OUT TO STOP YOU FROM REPLACING THEM IN THEIR POSITION because they know full well you would be a zillion times better at the job than they are. Every single person you work with is OUT TO GET YOU in one way or another so you have to be prepared to defend yourself when they launch a sneaky attack.

Sneaky bastards at work are very sneaky. They know all the jargon to use especially if the workplace is a setting where things like political correctness, diversity, inclusion, tolerance etc etc are important, such as a college or university. They can talk the talk all right, better than you can, but dig deep enough and you’re sure to come up with some MASSIVELY HORRIBLE FAUX-PAS they’ve made that would get the nasty fucker SACKED AND MADE JOBLESS FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIFE if it was made known – and you can be CERTAIN of this because although they make all the right noises to all the right people, each day YOU can see the glaringly shitey way they carry out their duties, the short-cuts they take, the mess they leave for others to clean up. Knowledge is power and sometimes it’s satisfying enough to know you hold the power to destroy their career and sometimes a quiet, friendly word in their shell-like (I KNOW WHAT YOU DID, FUCKER) is enough to put a halt to their scheming meanness even if you DON’T know what they did because there’s bound to be something, there always is.

But usually it isn’t enough. These people are brazen egomaniacs (and I’m still talking about ALL work colleagues here, even if they’re pretending to be your friend – THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIEND) and will call your bluff by running to the powers-that-be with imprecatory complaints and accusations about YOU, malicious and defamatory LIES that WILL BE BELIEVED because let’s not forget one important thing – THE POWERS-THAT-BE ARE ALSO SNEAKY BASTARDS, EVEN MORE SO BECAUSE THEY’RE EXPERIENCED SNEAKY BOSSY BASTARDS and they will always protect their own.

But there ARE ways for a nice person to defend themselves against WORK COLLEAGUES. Here’s a list —

1 ALWAYS carry a recording device and ALWAYS keep it handy and ready to be switched on.

2 Hidden little cameras can work in your favour if placed strategically (don’t be afraid of them, they’re YOUR cameras)

3 Be meticulous with your work emails – never gossip, never forward gossip that’s sent to you, never call anyone names even though it’s the best and funniest and most apt name and you just KNOW it’s so hilarious it’ll become the person’s new nickname and everyone will think you’re a brilliant wit – no they won’t, they’ll just GRASS YOU UP like the sneaky bastards they are.

4 Learn how to hack into computers so you can see everyone’s emails. Sneaky bastards can also be stupid bastards and email evidence is admissible when you’ve had enough of being nice and want to get their nasty arses SACKED.

5 Once you’ve mastered hacking you’ve got the bastards. You can hack into their email accounts and write emails to the bosses saying things like “I WILL KILL YOU” or “YOUR WIFE IS A RIGHT GOER, ISN’T SHE?” or “STOP DOWNLOADING ANIMAL PORN IN WORKTIME, YOU FUCKING BEAST.”

6 Follow them home (concentrate on one work colleague at a time or you’ll get muddled up) and wait outside their house to see if they go out again then follow them to where ever they go and TAKE A GOOD CAMERA WITH YOU. I bet you’ll find they indulge in some NASTY HOBBIES like DOGGING and SELLING THEIR BODIES ON THE STREETS and DRESSING UP LIKE BABIES IN ADULT NAPPIES AND HUGE PRETTY BONNETS and HAVING LARGE LADIES SIT ON THEM. These are the people you’re working with, you have a RIGHT to know what they get up to in their own time. What’s wrong with nice hobbies like yours – Wednesday night ZUMBA CLASS and Thursday evening BOOK CLUB and Saturday morning HIKING CLUB? Each and every one of your work colleagues is, in their own way, A FUCKING PERVETED DEVIANT and if you follow them for long enough you’re sure to find out their dirty little secrets.

Bide your time until the time comes when an opportunity arises for you to blow the bastards out of the water. And it WILL. Be WATCHFUL, be WARY, be CAREFUL and you’ll get them in the end.

I haven’t written a post for my blog yet, I didn’t get up till after midday. Not that it’s any of your business, why do you want to know what time I got up? I don’t ask YOU what time YOU get up, do I? It’s just plain nosiness that’s what it is and I’ll ask you to remember whose fucking blog this IS, it’s MY blog, I’m the BOSS OF MY BLOG and I’ll get up whenever I bleeding well WANT to get up, my name’s DOTTY HEADBANGER not fucking ROYAL MAIL or whatever the American or Canadian or Australian or Netherlandian or Colombian or whatever country you are on my list version of ROYAL MAIL is – if you want your post to arrive on time RING THEM UP AND ASK WHY THEY’RE SUCH TARDY BASTARDS.

You’ll get a new post from ME when I’m good and ready so stop nagging me, I’ve been INCAPACITATED you know, didn’t you read THE FUCKING MIGRAINE POEM? What do you think THAT was all about, do you think I wrote it for your ENTERTAINMENT? – no I did NOT write if for your entertainment I wrote it because it’s all I COULD write because nothing else had happened to me while I was lying there IN FUCKING AGONY.

Fucking blog. Can’t a She-Hermit sleep in on a Saturday morning after being INCAPACITATED? nag nag nag nag nag.

I NEVER sleep in, I’m up between 5.30am and 6.30am every morning, weekends included. AND THE ONE TIME I SLEEP IN BECAUSE I WAS INCAPACITATED THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY AND IT’S WHINE WHINE WHINE WHINE WHINE give me a post, I want a post, if you don’t give me a post I’ll just nag and nag and nag, do a post, do a post NOW, do one do one do one.

NO I WON’T DO ONE. So fuck off, I’m going to make my Cumberland sausage sandwiches for my breakfast now, I haven’t had anything to eat for two days – no it’s more like THREE days. Do you want to see me STARVE?

I might be back later with a new post, I might not, it depends if I can be ARSED TO DO ONE. I might have other more interesting things to do like EXAMINE MY ELBOWS.

So there. Stick THAT up your blogging WordPress and swivel on it, fucking nagging fucking BELL-END of a fucking blog.

Right, this SECRET PLAN of mine is going to surprise you. Shock you even. It shocked ME when it slammed itself right to the front of my thoughts, knocking all other possible plans that might have been forming back down into the strange and shady pit of my subconscious. It took me a while to get my head round the fact that THE PLAN was really there, shining and magnificent, the ANSWER to a problem I hadn’t had time to think and worry about. A little MIRACLE had happened.

But it wasn’t just the presence of THE PLAN that astounded me – it was THE PLAN itself, what it entailed, what it implied, what it MEANT, not only in relation to the retrieval of my new towels and my basins but, if I could pull it off successfully, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

I won’t tease you by spouting lines and lines and paragraphs and paragraphs of distracting words to keep you in suspense and keep you reading because you might get bored of having to wade through word after word after word, and line after line after line, and paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. We Who Are Mental can have short attention spans and you might lose the thread and just skip down the page to The End to see what happened, or worse still, you might LEAVE THIS PAGE. But if you were to skip down to The End to see what happened, or if you were to LEAVE THIS PAGE you’d miss me

eeeeeekkk! eeeeeeeeeeekkkkkk!!!! eeeeeeeeeeeekkk!!!

GOING OUT OF MY HOUSE ALONE

Yes, yes, you did, you read it correctly. I went out alone. On my own, on my todd, solo-solo-marco-polo. I DID IT.

She-Hermits, He-Hermits, everyone else – I bet you’re gagging to know HOW – well, I’m going to tell you, you’ll just have to hold on a minute while I turn my Cumberland sausages before they burn on one side.

♪♬♪ dooby-dooby-doooooooo

dooby-dooby-doooooooo ♬♬♪

You can tell how excited I am, can’t you? I NEVER EVER EVER leave my Cumberland sausages to cook by themselves without keeping a supervisory watch over them to stop them spitting at each other and violently rolling into each other’s sides. It’s just not worth it, an unevenly cooked Cumberland sausage can be just as bad as an undercooked Cumberland sausage, but I’ve turned the gas down now so they should be okay.

Okay, how did I do it? How did I GO OUT OF MY HOUSE ALONE? Actually I don’t really know, I JUST DID IT. I didn’t think about it, instinct or something must have taken over, I didn’t even put any shoes on, I just grabbed a cold Cumberland sausage from the fridge, stuck it half in – half out of my mouth so I wouldn’t scream – in case I dropped it and also to nibble on for sustenance and energy while I was running – then I unlocked the back door and RAN.

And you should have seen me – I was like USAIN BOLT, like the WIND ON LEGS, faster than the speed of light, I was REALLY fucking fast, if anyone was watching they wouldn’t have SEEN ME I was that fast, I’d have been nothing but a SPEEDY LITTLEBLUR before their eyes, THERE and GONE, what WAS that?

RUN, FORREST, RUN!

Four strides to the corner, four strides back. That’s eight strides, eight record-breaking fast-as-fuck STRIDES I DID OUTDOORS.

Waaaaahhhhhhooooooo!

And in between was the swiftiest little pick-up ever. I didn’t even STOP for the pick-up and I had TWO BASINS FULL OF NEW, WET TOWELS to pick up. TWO. It was like a sprinty dance the way I did the turn and the pick-up at the same time while still managing to keep up the flow and the momentum of the run itself – FUCKING FLUID AND BEAUTIFUL, that’s what it was, like Dancing On Ice except it wasn’t dancing it was running and it wasn’t on ice it was on my concrete path – and those TWO BASINS FULL OF NEW WET TOWELS were really heavy, I thought I was definitely going to drop them or snap my hands off at the wrists and I knew how the skaters must have felt during PROP WEEK on Dancing On Ice, it’s bloody well hard you know, you don’t realise HOW HARD it is when you’re watching them on the telly because they make it look SO EASY, and so did I, I made it look like a piece of piss, I’d have been TOP OF THE LEADER-BOARD if Robin Cousins had been in my garden, judging me, and if Jayne and Chris had been there too they’d have FUCKING LOVED IT, they’d have wanted to COACH ME but I’d have said no because I don’t think I’d like ice-skating, I like to keep my feet firmly on the ground, thank you, but I wouldn’t mind having a go at the FLYING ROUND THE RINK thing, that looks like SUBLIMEMAGIC and ROMANCE on a safety harness and a sturdy length of steel wire.

I reached the back door again and as I entered the house I let the TWO BASINS FULL OF NEW WET TOWELS drop onto the kitchen floor and I executed a STRIDEY LEAP over them that would have only scored maybe a low four because I was knackered by that time and all the power had gone out of my legs.

My heart was thumping, not panicky thumping, good thumping and I flopped flat over the kitchen table to get my breath back. I was SO PROUD OF MYSELF, SO VERY FUCKING PROUD that I wanted to ring Lottie and tell her what I’d just done, but I couldn’t get up and by the time I did get up to shut and lock the back door the urge to ring her had gone.

This is the SECOND TIME I’ve been out since I started my little blog back in December of last year. But it’s the FIRST TIME I’ve been out ON MY OWN for THREE YEARS.

In the space of a few days I’ve planned the party that wasn’t a party (planning it counts?) and I’ve GONE OUTSIDE MY HOUSE ON MY OWN.

Numpty the boilerman came back this morning with the parts he needed to fix the boiler. I don’t know what they were, I kept myself hidden in my laptop reading through someone’s blog while he did what he had to do. He rang yesterday evening so I knew he was coming and this time I took extra beta-blockers and a big, BIG swig of laudanum to help me cope while he was here.

I was in the living room to save my ears from imploding and so he couldn’t talk to me and make me even more panicky. The boiler is in the utility room at the back of the house. He’d been here about half an hour when he came to the living room door and tapped on it. ‘S’cuse me, love, have you got some old towels?’

Old towels? Oh for fuck’s sake. ‘How bad is it?’

‘No, it’s not too bad, don’t worry yourself.’

I went to have a look.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, AND NOT A DROP TO DRINK

Why are people so FUCKING USELESS?

I got him some towels from my airing cupboard, which weren’t old towels they were NEW towels from the collection that fell on me the day Granny Euphemia came to see me. I thought – why am I not in a right tizz, panicky and terrified, but I wasn’t, no, my extra medication must have been just right. I’ll have to write down what and how much I took so I know for the next time something comes up. I took the towels downstairs and waded through the big puddle near the back door.

He pointed at the cooker and said, ‘If you start there you’ll stop it running underneath.’

Me??

ME??

I DON’T THINK SO

So I calmly said —

YOU INCOMPETENT TWAT OF AN ARSEWIPE, YOU CAN FUCK OFF. YOU MOP IT UP OR YOU MIGHT AS WELL WHISTLE FOR YOUR MONEY BECAUSE YOU WON’T GET ANY OF MINE.

and I went back into the living room and carried on reading the blog.

Another hour and a half later he tapped on the door again. ‘I’m finished, love.’

And guess what? He had.

The boiler is working, no leaks, and he did such a good job mopping up that my kitchen floor has PATTERNS IN THE LINO THAT I’D FORGOTTEN ABOUT.

I might ask him if he wants a cleaning job, cash in hand.

So all’s well that ends well.

Amazing.

Except I don’t know what he’s done with the new pack of towels I gave him.

Where are they?

EDIT EDIT EDIT — I can see the towels but I can’t get them. The bastard’s left them in my two washing up basins OUTSIDE. I can’t reach them because they’re JUST ROUND THE CORNER, I can see about eight inches of towel and about one inch of basin. What will I do, what will I do?

This is a Happy Mother's Day flower for meine Mami. I can't give her a real flower because I don't know where she is.

If anyone got a post in their email that isn’t here now it’s because it was a PICTURE POST that I made for meine Mami for HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY with some lovely pictures and captions and it was lovely and it was FUCKING BRILLIANT – but it SHAGGED MY LITTLE BLOG RIGHT UP because I can’t do pictures. So I’ve made a little rhyme instead —

A HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY RHYME FOR MEINE MAMI

Where have you gone, meine Mami?

It’s been years since we last had a hug,

since then my brain has gone gammy –

it’s all manky and skanky with fug.

I miss your old legs, meine Mami,

and the fun and the laughs of our games

with the butter and mayo and jammy

that we spread on your varicose veins;

and your laugh, like a crying old donkey

with its tail trapped in somebody’s door;

and your eyes, even though they are wonky

and as grey as the dust on my floor.

Please, please come home, meine Mami,

your absence is harder than stone

and it hits with a quadruple whammy

each hour when I’m sitting alone.

Meine Mami, I miss and I love you

so much that it makes me feel sick;

when you want to come home I’ll be waiting

with a Cumberland sausage sandwich and a plate of McCain’s Chippy Chips and a packet of Hobnobs and a BRAND NEW BRICK.

Does anyone want a Milk Chocolate Cumberland Sausage bun? I have 24. I made two batches this morning. And I made two batches of Dark Chocolate Cumberland Sausage buns too (80% cocoa solids), in case little Emily and Lottie felt they were too old for Milk Chocolate Cumberland Sausage buns. They’re nice, I put Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons on top.

I also made a Cumberland Sausage trifle (like a traditional sponge trifle but without the sponge – I used Cumberland sausages instead). And I made a cake that DOESN’T have Cumberland sausages in it, it’s an Opium & Laudanum Sandwich cake that I made for Branwell because when little Emily told him about the party he got excited and said he wanted to come, and that’s what I’m going to eat all by myself, I’m going to scran the whole fucking lot of it, my Opium & Laudanum Sandwich cake with FRESH CREAM AND JAM.

Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

They all said they wanted to come. I expected Lottie to decline but she surprised me and said yes.

I surprised myself by even considering having a jolly-up, by even allowing the idea inside my head when Judith put it there. What type of She-Hermit has a PARTY?

A RECOVERING type of She-Hermit has a party and that’s what I went to bed thinking, maybe this is the first step on the road to recovery for me, maybe this party is the start of getting my life back again.

You’re too late for a bun. I smashed them up with my brick during my shaping session. You can lick the chocolate buttercream out of my hair if you want to though, before it dries up.

I don’t know what to do with all these balloons. They’ll hurt my ears if I pop them. I can’t open the back door to set them free in case little Emily and Branwell are still outside, waiting for a chance to get in. She’s mad at me, foaming. Raging.

But guess what, it’s sod’s fucking law he has to come back again next week because I WAS RIGHT and the boiler needs two new PARTS that can’t be ordered until Monday so won’t arrive until Wednesday but he doesn’t know WHEN he will come to fit them. If he had come yesterday when he was supposed to he could… oh, frig it, what’s the point?

He’s been.

And I DIDN’T lock him in.

I didn’t hit him.

I wasn’t sick on his shoes.

I didn’t have a panic attack (came close a couple of times).

I didn’t cry in front of him, just a few tears that I managed to blink away.

I don’t THINK he heard my heart battering away, or me whispering my special mantra for peacefulness and calm, taught to me by HISHOLEY CHEESENESS, THE DAIRY FFARMA (fuckshitebastardfuckshitebastard) but he did keep giving me funny looks so it’s possible he might have noticed.

I did stutter, but for all he knows I might HAVE a stutter and there’s nothing wrong with having a stutter, it’s only if you have a stutter when you’re a TRAMPYSHE-HERMIT that it really bothers people.

I don’t think I was TOO mental.

I did shake slightly.

I made him a cup of tea because he asked for one.

I didn’t shake enough to scald his hand when I handed him the cup of tea he asked for because I didn’t hand him the cup of tea he asked for, I left it on the kitchen worktop for him.

I did scream once but it wasn’t a mental scream it was a METAL scream due to sudden excrutiating HURTY NOISE in my ears when the bastard was trying to get the front of the boiler off and IT SOUNDED LIKE A GIANT METAL AEROPLANE SCRAPING ACROSS MY ROOF BECAUSE I HAVE HYPERACUSIS AND THE FUCKER SHOULD HAVE DONE HIS JOB QUIETLY LIKE I TOLD HIM TO.

I bleached the cup when he’d finished his tea.

And then I bleached my hands that had touched the cup that he had touched with his mouth before it was bleached.

He had stupid hair.

And he was a CHATTY BASTARD. But I know how to deal with CHATTY BASTARDS. I told him I’m deaf, which I’m not I just can’t hear properly, so he shut up and only spoke to me to ask me what he had to ask me which wasn’t much.

I wanted to go away from where he was. I really wanted to.

I couldn’t, for all the reasons that everyone can’t when they have a STRANGER IN THE HOUSE —

they steal your things

they sneak a look in your cupboards and drawers

and your fridge

they eat the food in your fridge (and I had made HEAPS of Cumberland sausages to see me through THE DAY OF WAITING)

they write rude things in the dust

they plant secret hidden mini-miniature cameras all over your house

they look for hiding places so they can sneak back in and hide until you’re asleep (which means you can’t go to sleep again)

they PISS IN YOUR SINK

they drink your beer if you have any beer, which I don’t because I don’t drink beer or any other alcoholic beverage – I am TEETOTAL apart from my morning ABSINTHE & BANANA SMOOTHIE, which doesn’t count because

1 – Absinthe is made of WORMWOOD which is a plant I grow in my garden, therefore Absinthe is a PLANT EXTRACT like SUNFLOWER OIL.

OY, BOILERMAN – see that writing in the picture? It’s for YOU, you LYING FIBBING SHIRKER.

Just you wait till morning – that’s if you ARRIVE in the morning and you don’t make up another excuse not to come. ILL? yes right, what with? DOUBLE PNEUMONIA? BERI-BERI? E-COLI? THE BUBONIC PLAGUE? ill my fucking granny’s gums, you are NOT ill if you’ve got anything wrong with you it’s MAN FLU, you woosy-arsed whiney fucking WIMP. If you want to see ILL you should have seen me today WAITING FOR YOU TO COME AND FIX MY BOILER but just you wait, tomorrow I’m not taking ANY of my FUCKING PROPANOLOL and tonight I’m not taking my FUCKING MIRTAZAPINE AND MY FUCKING NIGHT BETA-BLOCKERS AND I’M NOT TAKING ANY FUCKING PILLS AT ALL TONIGHT OR TOMORROW SO IN THE MORNING YOU WILL GET THE FULL EFFECTS OF ME NOT TAKING MY FUCKIGN PILLS AND THEN YOU WILL KNOW WHAT BEING ILL IS YOU LYING LITTLE BASTARD AND i WILL LOCK THE FUCKING DOOR SO YOU CAN’T GET OUT AND YOU’LL THNK YOU ARE LOCKED IN WITH A RAVING LOONY AND YES YOU WILL BE LOCKED IN WITH A RAVING LOONY AND THAT FUCKING LOONY WILL BE ME.

My boiler is leaking and I had to ring A MAN who will be here sometime before 8pm tonight. WHY CAN’T THE FUCKER GIVE ME AN EXACT TIME? Now I have to wait and wait and wait and it’s a long, long wait, it’s been an hour already since I had to use the phone to ring him and in that time I’ve taken three beta-blockers, a big swig of laudanum, and a good sniff of the smelling salts little Emily gave me. I AM STILL PANICKY THOUGH and I feel very, very sick.

HE WILL WANT TO ASK ME ABOUT THE BOILER.

AND I WILL HAVE TO TELL HIM.

WHICH MEANS SPEAKING TO HIM

AND LOOKING AT HIM IN A WAY THAT DOESN’T SEEM TOO MENTAL, SO HE THINKS I’M LOOKING HIM IN THE EYE BUT REALLY I’M NOT LOOKING HIM IN THE EYE, I AM LOOKING THREE INCHES TO THE RIGHT OF HIS EYES.

I have an OFFICIAL NEW BOYFRIEND who is an OFFICIAL OFFICER OF THE OFFICIAL POLICE WHO UPHOLD THE OFFICIAL BRITISH LAW.

It’s MY PET POLICEMAN, SERGEANT SHERLOCK.

He told me his real name again but it’s something boring so I don’t want to remember it, but he let me give him a sweetheart’s nickname because he’s a big softie. I call him PIGGY-WIG and he calls me MADAME HEADBANGER because I’m not some old slapper of a tart who lets men call her by her first name on THE FIRST DATE.

Yes, we had a DATE. A real one. This afternoon. He came round with PC Plod (his psychic police twin) and Sniffy, their little sniffy dog, on the pretext of giving me a Caution for wasting police time. He came in and pretended to give me the Caution, then he sent PC Plod and Sniffy off on a fake drug hunt round my house so he could get me alone.

‘I know you’ve manipulated the situation to get me alone to tell me nice things, but stand back or I’ll kick your bollocks up through your brain,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know I have Hermititis and People Phobia? That means I’m scared of PEOPLE which also means YOU. Nothing personal though, I still want to be your girlfriend. Piggy-Wig.’

‘Madame Headbanger, I assure you I have no intention of coming near you,’ he said.

I gave him a wink, then another few winks to make sure he noticed the winks because my eye’s still a bit swollen. I winked to let him know I was IN ON IT – our love had to be kept secret from PC Plod who wouldn’t think twice about grassing up Piggy-Wig to the Chief Inspector for romancing when he should have been at work.

‘Do you want a Cumberland sausage sandwich?’

‘I really shouldn’t … ah, go on then.’

I whipped the plate out of the keep-it-warm bit of the oven. ‘Here’s one I prepared earlier. Six I prepared earlier.’

He gobbled them down. And he had good eating manners – he kept his mouth closed and he didn’t make ANY disgusting noises. ‘Great sausages,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘Very nice. Thanks.’

“My dear friend Dotty makes wonderful Cumberland sausage sandwiches.” At the first syllable I turned round, whoosh, and there was little Emily smiling at me, holding out her arms for a big cuddle.

‘Little Emily!’ I ran over to her, and while we were having our big cuddle I heard Sergeant Sherlock’s chair move back from the table.

‘Madame Headbanger! Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes. I am now. This is my best friend in the world, Miss Brontë. Emily, this is my new boyfriend, Sergeant Sherlock.’

Piggy-Wig looked at me, then at little Emily, then at me again. ‘Madame Headbanger, come and sit down.’

‘No. You’re not one of those controlling men who won’t let me have friends, are you? I won’t put up with that, my dead husband would tell you I won’t. If he wasn’t dead.’

Little Emily tugged my cardigan sleeve and whispered, “Beware! He has the look of a sly fox! He is plotting against you!”

I whispered back, ‘Don’t worry, little Emily, I can handle him.’

Piggy-Wig took his phone out of his pocket. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a quick phone call.’

‘Okay.’

He went towards the back door. Then he stopped. He stood still for 48 seconds (I counted), and then he started swaying. I went over and guided him back to the chair, singing a little song for him –

♬♪ When Marimba rhythms start to play, dance with me, make me sway.

Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore, hold me close, sway me more. ♬♪♬

Little Emily said, ‘Oh Dotty! Dean Martin! Do you own a recording?’

‘Yep. I’ll dig it out for you later.’

She clapped her hands. ‘Wonderful!’

‘Will you help me with Piggy-Wig, please? He’s slumping and he weighs a ton.’

‘Move to the side. I know just the way to manouevre a man in a fugue. I have plenty of experience.’

In two shakes she had him sitting up straight at the table, then she did something with his head to stop it lolling. His chin was on his chest and he had a stupid grin on his face.

We left him at the table and went into the living room so I could look for my Dean Martin cd. While I was looking we had a little discussion about which Dean Martin song was best, SWAY or MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS. We’d just decided that we couldn’t decide between them when we heard stomping across the ceiling.

‘Goodness, Dotty, why did you refrain from mentioning another policeman in the house?’

‘I forgot. There’s a sniffy dog as well. It’s called Sniffy.’

‘What shall we do?’

‘I don’t know. I thought it would just be Piggy-Wig who came to see me. I didn’t know he was going to bring his psychic police twin with him.’

Next minute there was a massive clatter of noise as Sniffy started barking and came galloping down the stairs dragging the shouting PC Plod behind him. They ran right past us and into the kitchen and by the time we got there Sniffy had started going mental, barking his head off at Piggy-Wig and pulling so hard on his lead in his attempts to get to him that PC Plod had to brace himself on the kitchen worktop to stay upright. He got his radio out and told the other end that he needed assistance. Within five minutes there were more policemen in my kitchen than EVER before (and a young policewoman who had her hair scraped back in an unflattering way – she would have looked nicer with a fringe), then two paramedics (I think they were both paramedics, but one might have been just a normal ambulanceman), then just me and little Emily again. We sat for hours listening to Dean Martin, then there was a knock at the door.

The Big Chief Inspector! I hadn’t seen him since the night I killed Simon.

Come to apologise to me for me having to witness ‘…the dastardly doings of a drug-addled police officer.’ – his words, not mine. And who says ‘dastardly’ these days anyway? Well, obviously he does. But who else?

So there it is. I always pick the bad ones. I don’t know why I even thought it would be different this time.

Never mind though, I made myself some Cumberland sausage while I was making Piggy-Wig’s (naturally), and me and little Emily are going to spend the evening with Dean Martin, who looks even better in real life than he does in those old films on the telly.

Someone just sent me an email and in it they asked me a horrible, insulting stupid question that I think you should all see —

Is Little Emily your go-between drug dealer?

And here’s my answer that I’m writing here instead of in an email so I have evidence for when I SUE YOU FOR ALL YOU HAVE AND FOR ALL YOU WILL EVER EARN —

NO SHE IS NOT MY GO-BETWEEN DRUG DEALER, YOU FUCKING KNOBROT.

For one – little Emily is an AUTHOR

for two – she is DEAD

for three – what gave this stupid tosser the idea that I take drugs? Have I ever mentioned taking drugs? NO. Medication – YES, but drugs – NO I HAVE NOT. AND I DO NOT APPRECIATE THE INFERENCE THAT I HAVE.

I’m ringing the police. I’m ringing 999 and they’ll come straight away and when they do I’ll show them the email and tell them I want the fucker done for SLANDER. And I’m ringing Sergeant Sherlock who is now my PET POLICEMAN AND ALSO MAYBE MY NEW BOYFRIEND BUT WE’LL JUST SEE HOW IT GOES who will make sure the 999 police arrest that person and show them some good old-fashioned police brutality.

It’s been a few weeks since I saw them last, on THAT night – seeDotty In The Darkness (with lots and lots of swearing) – and I must say I’ve missed their sweet little 12 year old bum-fluffed faces that always look so SERIOUS. And I’ve decided to forgive them for THIEVING MY LITTLE HAND-DRILL because after many, many, many hours of rageful thinking about WHY they STOLE MY LITTLE HAND-DRILL, it came to me one day that maybe the policeman who STOLE MY LITTLE HAND-DRILL needed it for himself because being a policeman must be a stressful job sometimes – I wouldn’t want to have to spend my days (or nights if I was on night-shift) climbing trees to rescue stupid cats. Who would? Let the fuckers fall and then maybe they won’t SHIT ALL OVER PEOPLE’S GARDENS, maybe they’d be too frightened to go out in case they fell out of a tree and they’d stay in their own house and shit in there instead. (Or is that Firemen who rescue cats? Same difference).

Two policemen came to see me.

1 Sergeant Sherlock

2 PC Plod

They’re not their real names. I can’t remember their real names so I gave them aliases. They were new policemen, I’d never seen either of them before and I know all the local bobbys.

I didn’t hear them at first because they came to the front door and knocked on that but bricking it up must have provided a layer of sound-proofing so I only knew they were here when I heard them battering on the back door. I panicked a bit at the sound of banging on the back door, I thought it was someone wanting to dump THE BERSERKERS on me again, but I answered it and it was the police and my heart gave a little skip (not a panicky palpitation) because I thought they’d decided to give me my STOLEN LITTLE HAND-DRILL back, but when I said ‘Have you brought my STOLENLITTLE HAND-DRILL back, the STOLENLITTLE HAND-DRILL that one of you Keystone fuckers THIEVED FROM ME,’ Sergeant Sherlock said no, they hadn’t, they were here about the noise.

Eh? What noise?

‘Singing,’ he said. ‘Very loud singing.’

‘Oh, that.’ Fucking nosey neighbours AGAIN. ‘It was me and Clown, we were singing duets and rounds. We were bored.’

They’d tried to trick me with that one before, asking for my surname and when I told them it they said no, we mean the other person’s surname. But I was one step ahead of them.

‘Fire’

‘Where?’

‘No, that’s Clown’s surname, you knobhead. His middle name is On, but he doesn’t spell it with a capital O and I’m not sure if that’s because it’s spelt that way on his Birth Certificate or if he’s just minimised the size of the letter to try and look cool.’

‘Is Mr Fire still here?’

‘No, don’t be stupid. How can he be here? He’s at home.’

‘When did he leave?’

They were asking such daft questions I couldn’t help laughing. ‘HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. He was never here.’

PC Plod piped up, ‘Stop being unhelpful, Miss Headbanger. Mr Fire and yourself were disrupting the peace. We need to speak with him.’

‘It isn’t MISS Headbanger, it’s MADAME Headbanger. I have been married you know.’

PC Plod again, ‘So where is your husband? Is he here?’

‘No. I killed him.’

They didn’t say anything for a long time, they just looked at me. The silence was getting creepy so I said, ‘Don’t worry, he isn’t under the floorboards or anything. It was a long time ago and I was found not guilty.’ Bless their little rubber bullets, they each breathed out a long breath at exactly the same time, like psychic synchronised twins.

‘Where is Mr Fire?’

‘Do you feel each other’s pain?’

‘What?’

‘You know, like when one twin gets battered round the head, the other twin feels EVERY BLOW.’

‘Are you threatening us?’

‘No I’m NOT threatening you. I was just ASKING for fuck’s sake. Hoy, hang on, why are you looking at me like that? It’s police intimidation. I’ll report you.’

The Sergeant coughed. Well, it was more of a throat-clearing harumph. Actually no, it was a timely little bark. ‘Will you tell us where Mr Fire lives, Madame Headbanger?’

‘Yes, he lives in Canada.’

‘So he wasn’t part of the singing that disrupted the peace?’

‘Yes he was.’

‘I think you need to come down to the station with us.’

Oh fuck. I HATE going to the station because of my HERMITITIS AND PEOPLE PHOBIA.

‘Don’t you know I have Hermititis and People Phobia?’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. Do you want a Cumberland sausage?’

Sergeant Sherlock’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, you’re THAT Dotty Headbanger. The one with the Cumberland sausages. The lads down the station say you make the best ever Cumberland sausage sandwiches.’

‘Yep, that’s me, guv.’

And an hour later they left with their bobby-bellies full of Cumberland sausage sandwiches to go next door to arrest the noisy neighbours who won’t stop banging on my wall.

CUMBERLAND SAUSAGES TO THE RESCUE YET AGAIN? IS THERE ANY FEAT OF SUPER-HERO-NESS THEY’RE NOT CAPABLE OF? NO, NOTHING CAN STOP THEM.

I’ve eaten a lot of Cumberland sausages today because I’ve been bored out of my skull and my eye still hurts. I don’t know WHY Sundays are so boring, they’re just the same as every other day for me, here in my house, because I CAN’T GO OUT, but there’s a boring Sunday feeling to Sundays that I don’t get on the other days.

tO RELIEVE SOME OF THIS shitey boredom, i’M WRITING THIS SENTENCE WITH THE CAPS LOCK BUTTON SWITCHED ON, but i’M ALSO USING THE SHIFT BUTTON IN TWO WAYS, FIRSTLY i’M USING IT JUST AS i WOULD IF THE CAPS LOCK BUTTON WASN’T SWITCHED ON, AND SECONDLY i’M USING IT AS A shouty tool EXCEPT IT DOESN’T look to be working because this part looks more like a whisper than a shout. wHAT DO YOU THINK?

i’M GOING TO MAKE SOME MORE cUMBERLAND SAUSAGES. i MIGHT AS WELL STUFF MYSELF UNTIL i can’t fucking move.

I’m sick and tired of little Emily nagging at me to let her write a post on my little blog. Who wants to read her posts? She should get her own fucking blog if she’s that desperate instead of trying to write on mine. I’ve resisted and resisted her but this morning she turned up at my house with a final draft of her FIRST novel which is unpublished as yet because she’s been busy writing the one with Heathcliff in it and she hasn’t bothered sending this first one off yet. And, bless her big white cotton bloomers, you’ll never guess what she’s been doing these last couple of days? Copying out the whole novel BY HAND – yes, bloggy people (and COF) writers used DECIPHERABLE HANDWRITING to write before typing was invented – and she did it ALL FOR ME. So the least I can do in return is compromise – I can’t let her have a whole post to herself but I asked if she wanted to do some book reviews and she (quite grudgingly, for some strange reason) said yes, she would like to do book reviews. I made it very clear that she isn’t TAKING OVER the book reviews, she’s got this post and that’s her lot so she’d better make a good job of it, no shoddy writing or spelling mistakes or bad grammar or thoughtless punctuation because you won’t find any of those things anywhere else on my little blog and I won’t stand for it on this post either. And no ink blobs either (her hands are stained to fuck).

So, I’ll hand you over to little Emily who’s sitting next to me waiting for me to turn the laptop round to face her.

(hurry up, idiot, they’re waiting)

Dear Reader,

Good afternoon. My name is Ellis Bell and I am a man. I am a man for whom a good book is an essential requirement for a content and happy day. I am a man (I am a man) with a life-long, deep-held appreciation for words. I am a literary man of literature and letters. I am a man of books.

A book review is, ideally, a delicate examination of the inner workings of the author’s craft, and of the outer manifestations of the author’s ability to execute said craft. I am a man with a delicate eye with which to see. I am a man with a delicate hand with which to underline. I am a man with a delicate tongue with which to critic and praise. I am not a fierce man. I am not a harsh man. I am a fair and subtle man. I am a generous man. I am a gentle man.

I shall commence with the first book which has been selected for review by Mme D. Headbanger…

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

(The girl, Tess, hails from a place in the southern counties. I managed to determine her unfortunate origins by hearing her speak for a short time. Her accent is dreadfully thick, excrutiatingly so; it is such that I can not elicit one single, legible sentence from her. I refuse to waste the little space and time allocated to my reviews in the arduous task of translating her words. We shall continue to the next on the list).

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins

(I do not wish to review this book. My brother provides a generous and ample supply of laudanum-fuelled writings for my sisters and I to peruse. Besides, the author is a wicked, immoral cad).

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

(My dear, dear friend! Please, I beg of you, do not force me to go in there. Dotty, I implore you! Miss Havisham has fleas!)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

(The pretty face of Dorian Gray is undeniably enticing, however, I am forbidden to venture into the realms of this works by my dear father, a pious man of God, who has read of the author’s imprisonment and refuses to allow his daughter son to associate with ne’er-do-wells and lags).

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

(What is this? What is it?)

I have had quite enough of this foolishness. The books listed for review are not of my choosing; I deeply regret that I did not stand firm and insist upon the choices I myself made. I have squandered my one and only opportunity to become a far-famed blog author, lauded and esteemed, praised and admired throughout the Empire. If only my choices had been acceptable to Mme D. Headbanger, but what possible use are ‘if onlys’, now, at the summit of my shame?

Disgrace is upon me. I must hasten home.

Yours, in spasms of mortified ignominy,

Ellis Bell

Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t feel sorry for her, you should have seen HER list – actually, I’ll show you it or it’ll be me who ends up being the bad one in this —

Morning (barely) and I was woken up AGAIN by banging at the back door. I’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table sometime in the early hours, I can’t remember when. I think the last time I looked at the clock it was 3.42 am but it might not have been, I don’t know.

This time it was Lottie. She barged past me the second I had the door opened, storming into my kitchen shouting ‘WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE ARE MY GIRLS?’

‘Hold your horses, will you. They…’

‘TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!’

‘I fucking ATE them, where do you think they are?’

She made towards the door that leads to the stairs, ‘PRISCILLA! CECILIA!’

‘Shut up, you silly cow, they’re sleeping.’

She turned round. ‘Are they all right? Were they upset?’

‘What do you think? He dragged them here in their pyjamas, they were crying their eyes out.’

‘Oh God.’ She sat down at the table. ‘I nearly died when I went into their rooms and they weren’t there. You could have rung me, you know, why didn’t you?’

‘He didn’t tell me. I got up this morning and… ‘ Then she BURST INTO TEARS.

Lottie did.

SheBURST INTO TEARS (sorry I just had to say it again, I couldn’t resist, I haven’t seen her in tears since we were little). She BURST INTO TEARS and sat there crying for a bit.

I watched her. She doesn’t cry like normal people, she makes a strange HAHURR, HAHURR, HAHURR noise in amongst all the snivelling. I think there was a moan or two in there as well but I couldn’t swear on it because of my tinnitus being so bad. I hate people who moan when they cry, they do it for attention – just CRY for fuck’s sake, don’t make a big show of it, no one gives a toss.

After a couple of minutes I put the kettle on to make a drink. ‘Tea or coffee?’ I asked.

I think she said tea so I made her tea. I had coffee – I don’t like tea, it tastes like soggy washing. I wanted to make some Cumberland sausages for my breakfast but I thought it might look a bit heartless if I put the frying pan on while she was still crying, but then I thought no it won’t because I’ll say I’m making Cumberland sausages for THE BERSERKERS’ breakfast.

‘I’m making Cumberland sausages for THE… girls’ breakfast. Do you want some?’

‘No.’

Fair enough. Wait till she got a whiff of them cooking, she’d want some then.

‘Do you want toast instead?’

‘I don’t want anything.’

Fine. I got on with making my breakfast. Two Cumberland sausages each for THE BERSERKERS, six little beauties for me. I was starving.

My Cumberland sausages were quarter-cooked when she said, ‘Did they get to sleep all right?’

‘Yep.’

‘What about Cecilia? She won’t go to sleep if she doesn’t have her teddy.’

‘She didn’t mention a teddy.’

‘Oh.’

Silence again except for the sound of the Cumberland sausages cooking. Hiss, hiss, pfff, pfff. And an occasional sniff from Lottie. I got the bread and butter out, and the plates, and a couple of cups for THE BERSERKERS’ milk.

‘Wayne’s seeing someone else.’

WHAT? FAT-FUCK? SHAGGING AROUND?! HA HA HA HA HA!

‘He’s leaving me. That’s where I went last night, why I left the girls with Scotty. I followed him to her house.’

I turned the gas down so my Cumberland sausages wouldn’t burn. I didn’t know what to say to her. What CAN you say? So I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘No, me neither, I thought we were happy, everything was fine. I can’t believe he’d do this, he always says the girls and I mean the world to him.’

‘No, I mean I can’t believe someone else would want him.’

Oops.

‘What do you mean?’

In for a penny, in for a pound — ‘Come on, Lottie, he’s a fat wanker – he’s a waste of good eyesight. You’ll be well rid of him.’

That did it.

‘WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY HUSBAND? HE IS NOT A FAT WANKER, HE’S WELL BUILT AND HE’S A PROPER MAN, NOT LIKE THE WIMP YOU MARRIED AND WHERE IS HE? OH LOOK, HE’S DEAD BECAUSE YOU MADE SUCH A GOOD CHOICE OF MAN YOU HAD TO KILL HIM.’

‘That’s a bit below the belt. And who said I HAD to kill him?’

She got up fast, scraping my chair across the lino.

‘Don’t do that, it hurts my ears.’

‘Fuck off, Dotty.’

Woohhooooo! She IS human. Off she went to get THE BERSERKERS and I let her, I could see it would all end in more tears if I didn’t (ha, she BURST INTO TEARS). I went back to cooking my Cumberland sausages which were almost done. A couple of minutes later I heard the toilet flush, then again, then they all came into the kitchen.

‘Cumberland sausages for breakfast!’ I said.

‘We’re going.’

‘No mummy,’

‘Yes!’

‘I’ve made their breakfast.’

She ignored me and handed THE BERSERKERS their coats. ‘Put them on.’

‘Want to thtay here.’

‘PUT YOUR COAT ON.’

And twenty seconds later they were gone and it was like they had never been. Except I had ten lovely Cumberland sausages for breakfast instead of six.

After Useless Judas stormed out of my house I locked and bolted the back door then I shouted to THE BERSERKERS to come back into the kitchen because Uncle Scotty had gone. When they appeared in the doorway they looked like little war orphans and I could have cried at how pitiful they were but I didn’t, I got them a cup of milk and a cold Cumberland sausage each from the fridge and I got myself a glass of Diet Coke and four cold Cumberland sausages from the fridge and I said come on, let’s take these up to bed.

I carried my glass of Diet coke and the two cups of milk (any pedantic wisearses reading this – before you say it, no I don’t have three hands – the cups have HANDLES). THE BERSERKERS carried all six of the cold Cumberland sausages between them in their pudgy little GERMY hands and normally after they’d touched them I’d have had to give my cold Cumberland sausages a good scrub under the cold tap before I ate them but that was before I had little Emily’s WABBIT PIE. No food can faze me now.

At the door to the spare room Prissy, the eldest, said, ‘Can we sleep in with you, Auntie Dotty?’ I didn’t get chance to say no, they were off like a pair of muggers into my bedroom, on top of my bed.

‘OY, mind the Cumberland sausages. Don’t get bed on them!’ I didn’t have the heart to kick them into the spare room even though I knew I was in for another night of no sleep if I let them stay (have I ever told you I’m nice and kind like that?) so I put their cups of milk and my glass of Diet coke on my bedside table (which was, to my surprise, surprisingly collection-free – little Emily must have had a tidy up) and I got onto the bed with them.

‘You two, give me my Cumberland sausages.’

‘Can we eat ours?’

‘Yep. Erm, why are mine damp? Have they been licked?’

The GLANCE OF NAUGHTINESS that usually passed between THE BERSERKERS when they were up to something didn’t happen so I knew my Cumberland sausages were spit-free. Poor little things, they’d been traumatised by Useless Judas shouting at them. I knew I had to ask them THE question, whether or not he’d smacked them, but I was nervous of the answer they’d give because he’d been so wound up he could easily have lost it with them, and if he had there’d be no way he’d admit it to me. I had to do it with subtleness though.

‘Did Uncle Scotty smack either of you?’ I said in the very slow high voice people use when they’re asking kids a delicate question.

Neither of them answered. Oh-oh.

‘Did Uncle Scotty hurt you? You have to tell me if he did.’

Prissy shook her head. ‘We hurt HIM. She bit his sore finger and I hit him in the front bum with the Wii remote.’

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA – I managed not to laugh out loud, I turned away and got my glass of Diet Coke so they wouldn’t see me trying to hold my face straight. ‘That was very naughty, girls. You shouldn’t hit people.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Thorry.’

‘Right, finish your Cumberland sausages and drink your milk so we can go to sleep.’ I wanted to ask them where Lottie and Fat-Fuck had gone and why Useless Judas had been left to babysit at all – he’s the last person I would have expected Lottie to leave her kids with – but that could wait till morning, I had to get them to sleep before the four beta-blockers I’d taken ran out of power.

We got under the covers, me in the middle because they wanted me there but I couldn’t do with being in the middle, it was too much like being trapped between two bald monkeys so I had to get Prissy to climb over to the other side of Cissy. After the scramble I said, ‘Lie down now and go to sleep.’

‘Tell me a thtory. Winnie-the-Pooh.’

‘I want Cinderella.’

Fuck. I can’t remember stories.

‘Please.’

‘Pleathe.’

‘Howsabout I make up a story?’

‘Yeth. Make up Winnie-the-Pooh.’

‘Okay let me think for a minute. Right, erm, once upon a time there was a bear who lived in the woods. He SL… ‘

‘That’s Winnie-the-Pooh. I don’t want a baby story.’

‘Yay, Winnie!’

‘Shut up and listen. He SLEPT in the woods, he ATE HIS DINNER in the woods, he PLAYED in the woods, but the one thing he DIDN’T DO in the woods was SHIT IN THE WOODS. His name …’

‘You thweared, you thweared!!’

‘… his name was WINNIE-THE-SHITE… ‘

gaspy screams of shocked laughter, hands clamped to their mouths as though they’d said the word themselves – EXACTLY the reaction I’d hoped for to cheer them up a bit (see, I DO know what to do with kids, I bet you thought I wouldn’t have a clue, didn’t you?) except now I had to think of more story.. ‘so one day Winnie-the-Shite had been for a shit in the nearby town and was trying to get back to his home in the woods when he got lost. He wandered round and round the trees but all the trees looked the same and he couldn’t find a tree he knew. He wandered all day and just as it started to get dark and he started to get scared he saw a pretty little cottage with smoke coming out of the chimney and Winnie-the-Shite thought to himself, ‘I wonder if anyone’s in?’ So he went and knocked on the door but there was no answer so he tried the door and it wasn’t locked so he opened the door and he looked inside. Everything was like it is in The Three Bears story —- do you know The Three Bears?’

They both nodded.

‘Goldiwockth’

…. ‘and Winnie-the-Shite thought to himself, ‘I think I’m in The Three Bears Story, I’d better get out of here before they come back and think I’ve eaten their porridge.’ But the porridge smelled lovely and when he went over to the cooker and lifted the lid on the porridge pot, and looked in the porridge pot, the porridge LOOKED lovely ..’

‘No, Winnie-the-Thite, don’t eat it!’

… ‘and he picked up the big wooden stirring spoon and dunked it in the porridge and he got a BIG gloop of porridge and he ate it. And it tasted nice but it needed a bit of salt to make it taste LOVELY so Winnie-the Shite looked round the kitchen for the salt but he couldn’t see any, so he started opening the cupboard doors and looking inside the cupboards but he couldn’t find it in any of the cupboards. He wondered if The Three Bears kept their salt in the bedroom so he opened the door to what he THOUGHT was the bedroom and ‘OH MY GIDDYGODDYJESUS,’ said Winnie-the-Shite when he saw what was in the room…’

‘What? What?’

‘It was a TOILET. But Winnie-the-Shite had never seen a toilet before and he didn’t know what it was, so he tiptoed across the floor to it and bent down and did what bears do to things when they don’t know what they are – he SNIFFED it!’

‘YEEEUUURRGGGHHHHH!’

‘EEEEEWWWWWWWWW!

‘And the PONG made him jump back in disgust. He ran back to the kitchen but the door he opened wasn’t the kitchen door it was the bedroom door and on Baby Bear’s small bed he saw a sleeping girl with thick, golden curly hair, just like Cissy’s hair, and he knew it was Goldilocks so he ran over and shook her awake and said ‘Come on, Goldilocks, we have to get out of here, The Three Bears will be back in a minute and THEY ARE DIRTY MINGING BEARS WHO SHIT IN THEIR OWN HOUSE, come on, come on, hurry up!’

‘Come on, come on!’

‘So Winnie-the-Shite and Goldilocks ran out of the bedroom and found their way back to the kitchen where Goldilocks stopped and refused to move until she had some porridge, but Winnie-the-Shite knew The Three Bears were on their way home so he said, ‘Let’s nick the WHOLE pot of porridge and we’ll eat it when we’re safe,’ so they each took a handle of the porridge pot and they ran out of the house and into the woods.

They ran and ran and ran, far into the woods, and when they stopped for a little rest Winnie-the-Shite said, ‘Hang on, I KNOW that tree.’ So he asked the tree, ‘Do I know you?’ and the tree said, ‘Yes, I’m Piney the Prickly Pine Tree,’ and Winnie-the-Shite said, ‘I THOUGHT I recognised you. Can you show me the way home, please?’ And Piney the Prickly Pine Tree swayed his branches in the direction of Winnie-the-Shite’s home and said ‘That way,’ and Winnie-the-Shite said ‘Thank you,’ and he set off with Goldilocks and the porridge pot and soon he was in his own cottage with the porridge pot on the kitchen table and a BIG bowl of salt, and BIG spoons and a new friend and they all lived happily ever after. Amen.’

Quietness. Stillness. Little breaths.

I waited five minutes until I was sure they were asleep then I shuffled round, carefully, and slid one leg out from under the covers. They didn’t stir so I slowly got out of bed and went downstairs. Little Emily was sitting at the kitchen table, writing.

She looked up from her page, ‘Oh, Dotty, those poor, poor little mites. But never fear – I will assist you, my dear friend. You are not alone.’

And she got up and made me a cup of coffee and brought me a packet of Hobnobs to dunk. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

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